Why AG Kihara wants lawyer Charles Kanjama barred from BBI cases

Attorney-General Kihara Kariuki has urged the Court of Appeal to bar a Nairobi lawyer from joining four appeals filed against a High Court ruling that blocked a plan to change the Constitution.

The AG says Charles Kanjama’s petition is not properly before the appellate court. In a May ruling, five High Court judges said the Constitution amendment bill, also known as the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI), was irregular, illegal and unconstitutional.

Mr Kanjama’s quest to join the appellate cases as an interested party, the AG says through Solicitor-General Kennedy Ogeto, was rejected by the High Court on March 17 during a hearing of the consolidated petitions challenging BBI.

After his petition was dismissed by the five-judge bench, Mr Ogeto says, the lawyer failed to appeal the decision. 

“He did not file a notice of appeal against the ruling and the consolidated petitions proceeded without his participation (up to the judgment). The four appeals have been set for hearing,” Mr Ogeto says in his response filed yesterday. 

He notes that the four appeals - by the BBI secretariat, President Uhuru Kenyatta, the Attorney-General and the electoral agency IEBC - have been allocated hearing dates. Mr Kanjama said he was acting in the public interest to challenge IEBC’s signature verification process. 

Read: Kanjama sues IEBC over verification of BBI signatures

He had argued that IEBC did not educate the public on how to confirm their details, making it difficult for many Kenyans to use its online system to verify their data and whether their details had been illegally used to endorse the referendum bill. 

But the judges declined his request, saying he moved to court late and wanted to make oral submissions. 

Because the lawyer was not a party at the High Court stage of the dispute, the AG argues, his participation at the appellate court is improper.