WAS ATTORNEY GENERAL'S ADVISES IGNORED, RESULTING TO NULL AND VOID RULING?
THE ONSET OF NULL AND VOID WAS ON MARCH 2017 WHEN THE COURT NULLFIED THE PRESIDENT ELECT- UHURU
KIHARA KARIUKI the current Kenyans attorney general, has been on spot offer the known reasons, failed to advise the president on the matter of NATIONAL affairs. Since his appointment as the chief lawyer of our beautiful nation, he hasn't done much in the drive of good advice to the president. Is his advice being ignored or is he misadvising the president? On all the cases he has been handling involving the government, all has flopped giving the citizen a notion that maybe he is advising the excecutive wrongly or maybe his advice is being ignored all together. according to our constitution here are the roles that he is supposed to handle; article 156 of the 2010 constitution the attorney general a) Is the principal legal adviser to the government - this simply means he is among advisers of the government on which government projects, cases and various representations he/she must be involved. b) Shall represent the national government in court or in any other legal proceedings to which the national government is a party, other than the criminal proceedings. - Any cases challenging the state , attorney general are the one who drives the proceedings as the representative of the government. this means he/she takes the interest of the nation to the court procedings. c) Upholds the rule of law and defends the public interest. The attorney general can be exercised in person or by subordinate officers acting with general or special instructions. This simply means if the attorney general is handling a case in a certain part of the nation, he/she can send the subordinates on the other sides of the nation to represent the country. Among other roles the attorney general has, the predominant one is that of advising the president and briefing him/her in the proceedings of the court and provides a legal advice on the way forward. The advice can be ignored depending on the, - interest, weight of the matter and the impact of the issue involved. Of recent many court cases involving the state has been seen getting overruled some of them declared unworth and some being invalid. For those of null and void it meant the advice was inappropriate and was not to be provided in the first place. To begin with, the appointment of the 21 CAS (chief administrative secretary) was termed as misadvised and the advice didn't involve the legal law during the creation of this office. Although the matter is in high court, this means the attorney didnt advice the president correctly. Another one was the BBI, which experienced a big blow when the high court termed it as null and void. Later the matter proceeded to the court of appeal which upheld the high court decision. Even if the attorney proceeds to supreme court, it shows that his advice didnt anchor well. What of Nairobi metropolitan service, formation? It was also termed as misadviced. This formation had seen the former governor mike sonko transfer some of the services to the national government which later led to his ouster. On his Facebook account mike sonko said he was drugged before signing the agreement. The court ruled against the decision, but up-to-date the national government hasnt csrapped NMS. The recent one is on the roll out of huduma numbers which was termed as the formation of a duplicate data and waste of public resources, wasn't received well by the president who has sworn to fight until the hudumacard project succeeds. Nevertheres the advice was not that convincing and it ought to follow the legal procedure. All this lies in the docket of the attorney general and he has the mandate and duty to scrutinize the matter before it comes to the public. LASTLY the transfer of KMC to the docket of KDF was received by resistant when Onkiya Omtata filed a petition against the decision to transfer a public parastatal to an army docket. The court,s decision was ignored by the government. It has been a norm for the government to ignore court orders since the time when former chief justice Maraga declared the UHURUTO government NULL and void. Even though there is a tussle between the judiciary and the executive, the attorney general had to seek his issues correctly and advises the president the right way to handle the matters regarding the national interest. Read the full article