Civil society organizations have condemned the criticism directed at the five judge bench that annulled the Building Bridges Initiative(BBI) process terming it a smear campaign meant to dent the credibility of the Judiciary.
The organizations, some involved in the BBI annulment petition process, have called on the Auditor General to immediately conduct an audit of all public resources used in the BBI process and surcharge those involved.
“Since the high Court has declared the entire process unconstitutional officers who committed public resources to the process must be held to account,” stated the organizations.
They also urged the Auditor General to publish a report for the public conducts on the outcome of the audit.
According to the organizations, they want all government officials who used public resources to popularize the BBI charged with misuse of public resources.
They also want Parliament to enact public participation legislation to bindingly define the parameters qualifying public participation as pointed out by the five judge bench.
The five-bench judges declared that at the time of the launch of the Constitution Amendment Bill, 2020 and collection of endorsement signatures, there was no legislation governing collection, presentation and verification of the signatures nor a legal framework to govern the conduct of a referendum.
Meanwhile, Governor Alfred Mutua has criticised the BBI ruling saying that the Judges relied on technicalities in their ruling.
In a statement, Mutua said as a party, they view that the judges placed a lot of importance on procedural technicalities and academic semantics and ignored the substantial issues that BBI seeks to cure in the society.
“The Constitutional of Kenya, 2010 enjoins our Judiciary at Article 159(2) (d) to administer justice without undue regard to procedural technicalities, which we believe in this case include the scholarly semantics that seem to have formed a critical part of the judges’ thinking,” he said.
