No ploy will salvage image of those who betrayed LSK

On Thursday last week, The Standard carried an article by Law Society of Kenya Council member James A Mwamu titled “Soul-searching needed to redeem LSK’s image.” Scientist Carl Sagan told us that “We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers.”

With due respect to my learned senior, I found the questions implied and answers given in the article wanting in courage and depth. Despite being a key player in the mess the law society is in today, Mr Mwamu sought to come across as a most uninvolved bystander driven solely by logic and reason, who wants nothing but the well-being of the LSK.

In his hierarchy of attributes, he appears to value a ‘lawyerly manner’ above all. His piece was one of the greatest attempts at self sanitisation I have seen in recent days.

While times are changing, the issues haven’t. The bottom line is that those who have betrayed the society’s members are well known and no amount of ‘lawyerly manners’ will save them. What Mr Mwamu needs to remember is that a festering wound first and foremost needs to be cauterised.

According to him, this process is too embarrassing and it would be better to cover the wound, put on lawyerly airs and pretend all is well.

The unfortunate fact is that the current LSK council led by Eric Mutua came to the Annual General Meeting of March 21 2015 with a premeditated intention of running a choreographed meeting.

They planned to proceed with business while pretending to be oblivious to objections from members.

Having reserved seats at the front for a select cabal that agreed with them, they set the stage to bulldoze through the meeting like National Assembly Speaker during the infamous passage of the security laws amendments.

Mr Mwamu and his cohorts in council had in the run up to the AGM ignored all legitimate and lawful attempts by members to get their voices heard.

Members of the LSK, as is required by the law, had served upon the Secretariat three motions to be included in the agenda of the AGM.

Regulation 35(2) of the LSK Regulations provide that upon receipt within the time prescribed of such motions, the Secretary of the LSK is obliged to include the Motions in the agenda for the AGM. The Secretary refused to comply with these mandatory provisions of the Law.

These so-called men of the law had further ignored express orders of the High Court to proceed to arbitration on the issues bedevilling the society.

Yet Mr Mwamu would have you believe that those who have rejected the council’s so-called “consultative meetings” scheduled for May 30 are intransigent. The membership is clear that no discussions will be had on that dodo of a project called the International Arbitration Centre.

When faced with individuals who will subscribe to neither reason nor rule of law and who are determined to pursue their foul ends by all means, the normal course of serene, sedate and sombre action is rendered impotent.

As Malcolm X once said, “Tactics based solely on morality can only succeed when you are dealing with people who are moral.”

As Chief Justice Madan once said, the public mind is an impressionable organ and the morbid usually attracts.

The LSK council understands this fully and has put out and trumpeted the “gore” at the AGM to reflect badly on young advocates and to hide their transgressions and the fact that they precipitated those very events.

Mwamu’s piece was but a continuation of that deceitful agenda for which we must call him out.

Lawyers are smart people who won’t be easily brainwashed into thinking that it is unlawyerly to insist on adherence to the law. Vigilance is sometimes vigorous.