Azimio la Umoja One Kenya leader Raila Odinga has strongly condemned President William Ruto’s vile attack on the Judiciary.
Speaking during a presser in Mombasa on January 3, 2023, Raila claimed that Ruto was trying to capture the Judiciary after putting Parliament under his firm control.
The Azimio leader further stated that Ruto seeks to intimidate, subdue and capture the Judiciary so that judges would always dance to his tune.
“This is not about the Judiciary, this is about where Ruto wishes to take Kenya and what it means for Kenyans. Having captured Parliament, Ruto now wants to intimidate, subdue and capture the Judiciary. He wants the judges not to hear cases against his policies, dismiss those cases or always rule in his favour. In other words, Ruto wants absolute dictatorship,” Raila said.
The Azimio leader called on the Judiciary to stand firm and not to be cowed by Ruto’s threats.
“We appeal to the Judiciary to stand firm defence of professionalism, independence, rule of law and constitutionalism,” Raila said.
“In this Judiciary, I see a product of the old struggle against a vicious dictatorship,” he added.
Ruto slams Judiciary
Speaking on Tuesday, January 2, 2023, Ruto accused some judges of being corrupt and colluding with cartels to sabotage government projects.
“I want to announce here that few people with vested interests who are beneficiaries of corruption in NHIF are now ganging up with corrupt judicial officers to stall reforms so that fake hospitals claims will continue. I want to assure you that this will not happen in Kenya again and we will stop it,” he said.
“We will not allow these people to derail our plans. The corruption enterprise must come to an end. We’ll deal with them firmly.”
This comes a month after Justices David Majanja, Christine Meoli and Lawrence Mugambi declared the Housing Levy unconstitutional and its continued implementation a contravention of the constitution.
The court, however, allowed the government to continue collecting the levy until January 10 when the case will be mentioned.
The court also suspended the planned implementation of the Social Health Insurance Act, which was aimed at creating the Social Health Insurance Fund to replace the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF).
