Karua goes missing during much awaited judgement
Narc Kenya party leader Martha Karua was conspicuously missing today when the Supreme Court issued judgment on the Building Bridges Initiative despite having been a petitioner in the matter.
Karua, who was opposed to BBI, had walked out during hearing of the appeal at the Supreme Court after her clients were denied audience and only told to file submissions.
In her twitter handle, she had protested the move to lock her clients out of the hearing. “We walked out of the Supreme Court BBI appeal after the court made a decision to exclude our clients the 74th, 75th &76th Respondents from highlighting their submissions.
The Supreme Court reasoned that because our clients joined the case in the High Court as amici curiae (friends of the court) they remain so before the Supreme Court yet the appellants named our clients as respondents,” she had said.
She claimed that their position was that they were named as respondents in the Court of Appeal and in the Supreme Court and that they participated as respondents in the Supreme Court in December 2021 when they successfully made an application to consolidate the appeals.
“We therefore submitted that the Supreme Court cannot turn around and lock us out having entertained us as respondents in the previous case. In any event no litigant or interested party should be locked out of hearing or treated in a discriminatory manner especially in a court of last resort,” she had said.
Muthoni Nyuguto represented her during the delivery of the judgment. Her absence was very conspicuous given the fact that she had just recently thrown her weight behind the Azimio La Umoja campaign fronted by its presidential candidate Raila Odinga and President Uhuru Kenyatta, the main proponents of the BBI process.
It would have been interesting to see how she could have balanced between defending her position in the BBI matter while maintaining her support for its proponents.
