The Judicial Service Commission should be overhauled to reduce the number of lawyers and increase representatives from other sectors, Nyeri Town MP Ngunjiri Wambugu has said.
The MP also wants the country to introduce the jury system for transparency and accountability.
The legislator said JSC should have employers, unions, women, youth, political parties and the media represented for the Judiciary to be accountable to Kenyans.
The current structure of JSC is incestuous as lawyers oversight themselves.
The MP stated this in a memorandum to the BBI he presented in Nyeri on Tuesday.
“Our current structure has the Judiciary being managed and oversighted by the Judicial Service Commission. This JSC is then accountable to Parliament through the Justice and Legal Affairs committee,” he said.
But, he added, JSC as currently constituted is essentially an institution that represents the interests of only 14,000 Kenyans who are lawyers while purporting to represent all Kenyans.
He explained that out of the 11 members of the JSC only two are not lawyers.
The members include the Chief Justice, a Supreme Court judge, a Court of Appeal judge, a High Court judge, a magistrate, the Attorney General and two advocates, a woman and a man elected by LSK.
Others are one person nominated by the Public Service Commission and one woman and one man to represent the public who are not lawyers.
“This means that only two members actually sit on the JSC to represent those amongst the 50 million Kenyans who are not lawyers.”
The legislator said the Judiciary is the arbiter of conflict and the perception and reality of a fair arbiter means that no one will ever resort to extrajudicial means to seek justice.
Over the years, he said, Kenya has strengthened its Judiciary and made it independent.
“We now live at a time when our Judiciary has such authority that it can create international precedents and nullify presidential elections. However such authority must be tempered with responsibility for it to be not only just but also to be seen to be just,” he said.
On introduction of the jury system, the MP said in Kenya today a judge or magistrate has the final decision on whether or not an accused person is guilty.
Where an affected person is not satisfied with a judicial decision, one has to appeal to the next level within the Judiciary at a cost.
“This has seen situations where poor people suffer injustice because they cannot afford to appeal a decision that a judge could have made under the influence of one factor or the other,” Wambugu said.
“Judicial officers are also protected from responsibility of their decisions on the basis that they make their rulings on goodwill.”
Introducing a jury to determine the guilt or otherwise of an accused person before a judge makes a ruling will introduce an element of transparency and accountability on judgments, he said.
