- Five of the seven candidates who will be interviewed are not new faces as they had already been interviewed for the position of Chief Justice.
- Judge Koome’s name was removed because she has been nominated for the position of Chief Justice
Image: FILE
The Judicial Service Commission is set to resume the interviews for the position of Supreme Court judge on Monday after the court gave them the greenlight.
The interviews that were scheduled for last week had been halted by the High Court but the Court of Appeal set the orders aside.
However, the process that was initially supposed to take five days will now take three days with seven candidates being interviewed instead of nine.
This is after two candidates were removed from the list one being the nominated Chief Justice Martha Koome who had also applied and shortlisted for the position.
Judge Koome’s name was removed because she has been nominated for Chief Justice and her name has already been forwarded to Parliament by the President for vetting and approval.
While Court of Appeal judge and Judiciary Training Institute director Justice Kathurima M’inoti withdrew his candidature for unknown reasons.
Five of the seven candidates who will be interviewed are not new faces as they had already been interviewed for the position of Chief Justice.
These are Civil Court judge Juma Chitembwe, Labour court judges Njagi Marete and Nduma Nderi, President of the Court of Appeal William Ouko and lawyer Alice Yano.
All the five including judge Koome had applied for both positions and they were shortlisted for two interviews.
The other two candidates are Civil Court judge Joseph Sergon and Scholar Dr Patrick Lumumba who are the only ones who will be the new faces going before the commission.
There has been a lot of speculations on what questions the five candidates will be asked since they already had a five-hour long interview during the recruitment for the position Chief Justice.
Before the interviews were halted by the court, JSC had scheduled two candidates per day one in the morning and the other in the afternoon but they have now changed it.
The commission has now put two candidates in the morning one stating at 9am and the other at 11am meaning the interviews will not be long like that of the Chief Justice positions.
On Monday, Justice Chitembwe who was also the first to be interviewed the last time will be the first to be interviewed followed by judge Marete.
On Tuesday it will be the turn of Justice Nderi followed by lawyer Lumumba who will be facing the commission for the first time at 11 am.
Interestingly, the commission has scheduled three candidates for Wednesday starting with Justice Ouko at 9am followed by Justice Sergon at 11am and later advocate Yano who closed the Chief Justice interviews will also close this one at 12.30pm.
The candidate who will be nominated by JSC will join the five other judges and replace judge Jackton Ojwang who retired.
The Supreme court now has five judges and if judge Koome is approved she will join to complete the quorum of seven.
-Edited by SKanyara