Give Judiciary enough funding to speed up wheels of justice

The High Court’s order barring Treasury from slashing the Judiciary’s budget allocation came at an opportune time. Already, some operations had ground to a halt following the closure of some courts due to monetary stress.

The Judiciary’s request for Sh31.2 billion in the 2019/2020 financial year was cut down to Sh14.5 billion by Parliament. Treasury further slashed this amount to Sh11.5 billion.

This did not go down well with Chief Justice David Maraga who warned that slashing the budget would cripple the Judiciary’s operations. It does not help that the Government has been unable to continue the Judicial Performance Improvement Project after expiry of World Bank funding in December 2018.

Not only has the Judiciary been compelled to labour under the burden of a lean staff, deficient infrastructure and meagre funds have led to a backlog of cases. In itself, this defeats the essence of justice on the simple premise that justice delayed is justice denied. 

The irony is that after slashing the Judiciary’s budget in the 2017/2018 Financial Year, Parliament went ahead to increase its budgetary allocation to Sh42 billion, an increase of Sh12.5 billion, notwithstanding the reasons it claimed informed the decision to deny the Judiciary its request.

Of course, there is no love lost between the Judiciary and the Executive, especially after the nullification of the 2017 presidential election. It is therefore easy to read mischief, even where there is none, in the scaling back of the Judiciary budget.

Despite the prevailing economic hard times, it is imprudent for Treasury to whittle down the Judiciary budget as crippling courts will have a ripple effect on all facets of the economy.

Besides being unable to dispense justice to individuals and companies, a weak Judiciary cannot be trusted to act as a bulwark against Executive excesses. In addition, underfunding the Judiciary at a time that the war against corruption has made positive gains puts this noble mission in jeopardy.

The critical role of a functional and independent Judiciary in the furtherance of democratic principles cannot be gainsaid. Countries that have enviable human rights records have well-funded judicial systems. We should aspire to reach that standard.

But we cannot achieve this by weaning the Judiciary of cash. That is why it is important for Treasury mandarins to respect yesterday’s court order and ensure that the Judiciary gets the money it sorely needs. To deny the Judiciary money is to deny Kenyans justice. That should never happen again.