CJ Maraga admits corruption deep in Judiciary

Chief Justice David Maraga has admitted that there is massive corruption within the Judiciary, and must be dealt with within the shortest time possible.

Justice Maraga who was on his first official assignment in Naivasha, told High Court Judges that the image of the country’s Judiciary had been tainted and little has been done to restore the public confidence.

He now says that he is ready to shape up the Judiciary during his tenure and asked Judges to support his bid to streamline the Judiciary operations.

Corruption in the Judiciary has for the past few days been under sharp focus with government agencies including the Office of the Attorney General and the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) terming the Judiciary as the weakest link in the war on graft.

Justice Maraga admits that corruption is deeply rooted in the Judiciary noting that this will be his first area to clean.

“We will strengthen the Ombudsman. The office will investigate corruption cases and later hand them to JSC and I shall take decisive action against any judge found guilty,” said Maraga.

President Uhuru Kenyatta, in his Mashujaa Day celebrations speech, challenged the new Chief Justice to initiate reforms within the Judiciary and ensure senior government officials found engaging in corruption are dealt with decisively.

“We will deal with those cases firmly and speedily, some of those cases sadly are over ten years old.”

But as Maraga warms up to take up the lead in the apex court, over 600,000 cases are hanging in the Judiciary unattended. The CJ has already established an advisory committee to draft a plan to end the cases backlog menace.

“I want us to start with cases that are five years old and do away with them in the next one year.”

The Judiciary has also come under sharp criticism from the President and other government departments that suffered court injunctions stopping procurement and development projects.

Maraga says giving injunctions and delaying giving rulings on such matters will harm the executive.

The Parliament and the Judiciary have been at crossroads over separation of powers, with legislators accusing the courts of interfering with their business. But Maraga downplayed the same, saying Parliament is subject to judicial interventions.

The two arms of government have been clashing on a number of issues, including who has the last say on impeachment of Governors.