Supreme Court Judge Njoki Ndungu has made a surprise request
to the Judiciary.
Justice Ndungu made an application to the court asking them
to cross-examine former Chief Justice Willy Mutunga in a case seeking to
restrain the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) from investigating her over
gross misconduct.
Through her lawyer Andrew Musangi, Ndungu wants Mutunga
cross-examined in relation to affidavits he swore in support of the JSC’s case
which claimed that she and Justice Jackton Ojwang went on a go-slow, crippling
the operations of Supreme Court in 2015.
Ndungu wants JSC's decision to interrogate her to be
thrown out saying it was only a sideshow and wants the case to be heard,
strictly based on merit.
“It goes without saying that the former CJ should take the
witness stand if this court directs that my client be interrogated on the
minutes of the Supreme Court over the disputed go-slow,”Musangi said.
According to The Star, it is alleged that the strike
was to protest the decision of the JSC to retire the then Deputy Chief Justice
Kalpana Rawal and Philip Tunoi upon attaining the age of 70.
Mutunga swore an affidavit in support of lawyer Apollo
Mboya’s petition, accusing Ndung’u and her counterpart Ojwang of going on
strike, and crippling the court’s operations for close to two weeks.
In the affidavit, Mutunga denied the decision to go on
strike in 2015 was a collective one.
Last year, the then Law Society of Kenya (LSK) chief
executive officer Apollo Mboya accused Ndungu of misconduct over the matter and
petitioned for her removal of office and make the judge “reimburse
taxpayers a quantifiable remuneration and benefits drawn during this period in
which they engaged in unconstitutional and illegal industrial action through a
self-imposed moratorium on all judicial operations”.
