The High Court will rule on a petition filed by the Law Society of Kenya (LSK) challenging the deployment of the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) amid the ongoing anti-Finance Bill protests on Thursday.
The court ordered parties in the case to appear virtually for a brief hearing in the petition pitting the LSK against the State and the Defence Cabinet Secretary.
In documents filed in court, LSK says that no state of emergency under Article 58 of the Constitution has been declared by President William Ruto in exercising his constitutional mandate under Article 132 (4) (d) of the Constitution.
“No emergency, disaster, insecurity, unrest or instability has been officially declared to exist in Kenya, and to be outside the mandate, scope or capacity of the National Police or any other authority to warrant the deployment of the KDF to provide support to the National Police in the manner envisaged in the Impugned Gazette Notice,” reads the petition.
They say that the Tuesday Gazette notice by Defence Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale is contrary to the Constitution and poses a huge threat of violation of the fundamental rights and freedoms of many Kenyans who may wish to exercise their right to peacefully protest within the confines of the Constitution and the law.
“Indeed, many Kenyans, especially youth between the ages of 18 to 35 are outraged by the current state of public finance management in the country and the government’s proclivity towards increasing taxes to fund its spending.
“As such, the youth have organised themselves and hundreds of thousands across the Country have turned up to carry out peaceful protests calling for the rejection of the Finance Bill 2024 is a demonstration of their frustration with the Government,” they argue.
It is their argument that the deployment is illegal and unconstitutional.
“What makes the move illegal and unconstitutional move clearly unprecedented is that save for the military coup in the year 1982, no other time in the history of our Republic has there ever been a carte blanche deployment of the military for purposes of supporting the National Police during civilian demonstrations,” LSK says.
