BY SAM ALFAN.
Stop President Ruto from sanctioning Finance Bill 2024
The Law Society of Kenya (LSK) has petitioned the High Court to block the deployment of the military to quell civil unrest over the controversial Finance Bill 2024.
The LSK said Kenya was not at war to justify what it called “illegal and hurried” decision by Defence Cabinet Secretary, Aden Duale, to mobilize troops against the citizenry.
In an urgent application, the LSK is seeking orders to quash the Kenya Gazette notice issued by Duale on June 25 purporting to deploy the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) to assist the police in handling violent public demonstrations that have rocked most parts of the country.
The LSK argued that President William Ruto, as the Commander-In-Chief of the KDF, had not declared a state of emergency to warrant the participation of the military within the country’s borders.
The unilateral declaration by Duale was unlawful and unconstitutional since the deployment of the KDF must have parliamentary approval, the LSK said in court papers.
The petition, filed by lawyer Chrysostom Xavier Akhaabi, is expected to be placed before Chief Justice Martha Koome to appoint High Court Judges to adjudicate on the substantive constitutional issues raised.
The LSK recalled that the recent peaceful demonstrations in Nairobi and other parts of the country were staged by youths aged between 18 and 35 years to express outrage at wanton corruption and mismanagement of public finances.
Further, the demonstrators were exercising their constitutional right to condemn the proposed tax increases contained in the Finance Bill 2024.
“The deployment of the KDF sends an alarming and chilling message to many Kenyans who would have wished to participate in peaceful demonstrations that the country may be receding into a police state or that the Government is at war with the people,” Akhaabi said in his certificate of urgency.
“The move has been generally considered as an attempt by the Government to muzzle, intimidate, frustrate or curtail the rights of citizens to peacefully protest against the Government,” he explained.
At the same time, the Mount Kenya Jurists Association and four others filed a separate suit seeking orders to stop President William Ruto from signing into law the contentious Finance Bill 2024.
The petitioners, who have asked Chief Justice Martha Koome to appoint a five-member High Court bench to handle the case, say the Government wants to bulldoze the budget process and implement harsh punitive taxation measures.
They have protested that issues raised during public participation for a have been discarded on favour of predatory economic policies.
“Members of Parliament affiliated to Kenya Kwanza Coalition surrendered their budget-making mandate to the Executive by acting as hapless agents of Finance Cabinet Secretary, Prof Njuguna Ndung’u,” the petitioners said.
Under Article 223 of the Constitution, they argued, there was no legal basis for the Finance Bill 2024 and the Appropriations Act 2024 to be implemented before the petition was heard and determined.
They recalled that the budget-making process has been married by controversy since Prof Ndung’u published the contentious bill on May 9, this year, before tabling in the National Assembly the estimates of the national government revenue for 2024/2025.
“There has been no effective public participation since the Government is asserting powers to raise additional revenue without parliamentary approval,” the petitioners claimed.
They reasoned that the Finance Cabinet Secretary published the estimates of national government revenue on June 4, this year after the National Assembly Budget Committee had completed public participation and submitted it’s report to the National Assembly.
“The budget-making process has been dictated by policy preferences and agenda of foreign governments and corporations, spearheaded by the International Monetary Fund(IMF), which have taken control of Kenya’s national Treasury to the detriment of the sovereignty of the Kenyan people in matters of public finances,” lawyer Kibe Mungai, who filed the suit, stated in the certificate of urgency.
