Schemes and counter schemes in Maraga succession wars – Weekly Citizen

Details of how a cabal of shadowy players has plotted to install disgraced Deputy Chief Justice Philomena Mwilu successor to CJ David Maraga.
An elaborate plot to ‘rescue’ Mwilu from her current legal woes in readiness to repackage her as first female CJ has been rolled out by a combined formation of a cabal of judges, a group of NGOs led by the International Commission of Jurists, and a section of the opposition politicians led by senators James Orengo and former AG Amos Wako.
Maraga is set to retire in 2021, and Mwilu backers are taking no chances, waging vicious battles to push her forward.
A cabal of well-oiled donor-funded non-governmental organisations have zeroed on judiciary as the last bridgehead to secure their political power grab ambitions.

Deputy CJ Philomena Mwilu

These are well known organisations that have invented new tactics in weaponisation of judicial processes to advance their civilian coup and regime change strategies.
Their tools of trade are infiltration of judiciary through “consultants and researchers” attached to certain senior members of judiciary, and who research on cases and write briefs and judgements for judges to read. The researchers are not paid from judiciary coffers, but hired as “legal aides” by donors.
Capturing the top leadership of the judiciary is the latest frontier by the highly organised and globally connected outfits founded, owned and directed by the same individuals who have waged a vicious, disruptive and corrosive war of attrition against the state and national institutions like an invading expeditionary force unprecedented in Kenya’s history.
Although they were named for instigating and funding post-election violence 2007/2008, profiling International Criminal Court indictees and procuring witnesses, none has been held to account themselves, while they liberally continue to secure rulings and judgments they wish against state actors from their friendly members at all levels of the superior courts. Their latest achievement has been to secure a summary dismissal of criminal abuse of office charges against Mwilu two weeks ago.
The Mwilu for CJ is the fifth major battle in as many years by the same formation and players and same sources of donor-funding.
Their role in nearly plunging the country into civil war in their effort to hoist their preferred presidential candidate to power is well documented in the Independent Review Commission report chaired by retired South African Judge, Johann Kreigker. That was their first power grab attempt.

James Orengo

The second was to profile alleged PEV masterminds on behalf of the International Criminal Court, and witness procurement mission in a bid to block some candidates from Kibaki succession contests of 2012/2013, through local court petitions parallel to ICC indictments, and a chorus of intimidation of “choices and consequences” from their Western backers.
After the ICC front flopped, all arsenals were shifted to consequential institutions, among them the judiciary and the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commision.
Twice the same cabal of individuals, outfits and political patrons challenged presidential election results in 2013 and 2017 but dismally failed to either force a power-sharing arrangements, or installation of their preferred candidate.
Undeterred, indefatigable and boasting unceasing dollar inflows from donors, the latest mission is to install one of their own on the driver’s seat as president of the Supreme Court and the Judicial Service Commission, from which perch they call shots on both political disputes and important judicial decisions.
Investment in Mwilu’s elevation as CJ is the latest desperate strategy in execution of what the cabal failed to accomplish through two high profile but failed presidential election petitions whose outcomes they blamed on lack of “courage under fire”, and alleged last minute capitulation on the part of former CJ Willy Mutunga in 2013 and Maraga in 2017.
Mwilu comes in handy for three key factors:
She is ideologically part of the school of thought that gripes against Mt Kenya political hegemony.
This makes her an ideological kindred spirit of National Super Alliance. Orengo is her lawyer in her current criminal proceedings.
In this regard, Mwilu shares undisguised contempt for Maraga, whom she views as despicable supplicant for the “Jubilee establishment”, since he declined to allow an application to dismiss Uhuru Kenyatta’s re-election on October 26 2017, on account he did not undergo a nomination process to become a presidential candidate nominee for his party, among other grounds.
Two, the criminal proceedings brought against her by the DCI, subsequent arrest and prosecution has all but shredded her legal career, leaving her extremely livid, and a willing assassin in a political dispute in a Uhuru succession election petition involving some of her current tormentors.

Amos Wako

Lastly, she enjoys rare leverage of powerful networks, including former Attorney General Wako, now a senator, who avails to her both deep judiciary connection and high level political networks.
As a father of her children, the former AG stakes in Mwilu’s life are personal and intimate.
Many Kenyans often overlook the fact that Wako was AG and a key player in the shortlisting and recruitment of many of the current senior members of the judiciary, Mwilu included, a factor that avails him considerable leverage in addition to being a member of the senate legal affairs committee.
The committee is especially a critical cog in the latest efforts to clean up Mwilu’s criminal charges, in preparation for launching her Maraga succession plot.
Maraga, 68, is due for retirement in 2021 on account of hitting the mandatory 70 years retirement age.
A deputy CJ, and a woman who enjoys both high profile political favour among senior Nasa members who owe her a debt of gratitude for her past services makes Mwilu’s prospects as first female CJ less than a far fetched dream.
Which brings little understood developments and players behind the shocking decision by a five-member bench to dismiss Mwilu’s criminal fraud charges to light as part of an elaborate orchestration by powerful forces behind the scenes. The judges dismissed the case not on veracity or otherwise of charges, but on “the manner” in which DCI obtained evidence of criminal fraud against her.
Kenyans were shocked when a five-judge bench dismissed criminal charges against Mwilu, not because the judicial brotherhood had saved one of their own, but the audacity of the manner in which they pulled it off.
In what is sure to become a case study in judicial impunity on the rampage, the five-man bench- justices Hellen Omondi, Mumbi Ngugi, Francis Tuiyott, William Musyoka and Chacha Mwita – found the charges untenable because of the manner in which DCI obtained evidence against her.
“The manner in which they obtained the evidence of her bank accounts was illegal. They acquired the documents in misuse of the court order and misrepresentation,” Justice Helen Omondi read the ruling on behalf of the five-member bench.
But was the decision to let Mwilu off the hook so casually an independent judicial decision?
Who else was involved or consulted in making this decision?
Many Kenyans may have forgotten a third party was introduced into the proceedings last February, when the court admitted an application by the Kenya Chapter of International Commission Jurists to be enjoined in the Mwilu case.

From left: Justices William Musyoka, Mumbi Ngugi, Hellen Omondi, Francis Tuiyot and Enoch Mwita at the Milimani Law Courts for the mention of case filed by the Director of Public Prosecutor over prosecution of Deputy Chief Justice Philomena Mwilu.

The same Justice Hellen Omondi, in her ruling on the ICJ application on February 18 said:
“In our view these proceedings require the participation of a neutral party that can bring some legal expertise to the proceedings and assist the court in reaching and making a just determination,” read the verdict.
A similar application by Fida to be enjoined in the Mwilu matter was rejected.
What kind of expertise ICJ may have offered, and may continue to offer in positioning Mwilu for Maraga succession can only be gleaned from ICJ’s public record, associations, partners and political agenda they advance.
To start and contrary to Justice Omondi’s designation of ICJ as a “neutral party” ICJ has no shade of neutrality in contemporary political developments in Kenya, least of all those to do with judiciary infiltration, capture and weaponisation against perceived political enemies.
Official reports named ICJ among groups that instigated ethnic and political violence in 2007/2008 Pev.
For a matter with far reaching legal and political ramifications in Kenya, ICJ should have been the last of parties to claim or merit “neutral” party status as justification to sneak into consequential court proceedings against a sitting Deputy Chief Justice, who is a breath away from presidency of the Supreme Court.
The five-man bench should have known better in admitting the travesty.
But as a ranking member of the regime-change by infiltration and judicial capture NGOs, ICJ fitted the camouflage perfectly.
ICJ is part of a coalition of political NGOs that are closely related, intimately owned and controlled by a close knit crony groups of founders, owners, board members, and whose common denominator is they are the undercover branch of the official political opposition and foreign espionage activities.
Their undisguised umbilical cord is they are members of the Open Society (East Africa), that is heavily funded George Soros Foundation, the global conduit of regime change largesse funneled to insurgent political and civil society groups and students in various regions of the world.
Kenya chapter executive director is Mugambi Kiai, a brother of columnist and for chairman of Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, Maina Kiai, while the East African boss is Muthoni Wanyeki, who, like Kiai and Makau Mutua sits on several boards of affiliate outfits patronised by Open Society.
Their modus operandi is to instigate instability, unrelenting in bad mouthing government locally and internationally through the mass and social media, funding unrest in the name of freedom of expression and financing stream of opposition litigations to derail, stall and divert government agenda.
Their nefarious activities were cited as having fueled the violence of 2007/2008, and which they escalated in the lead up to 2013 and 2017 in an attempt to influence the outcome, derail the election preparation calendar, and eventually trigger chaos to induce foreign intervention.
The chairman of the post election violence Independent Review Commission, Justice Johann Kreigler, named ICJ and Kenyans for Peace, Truth and Justice as among groups “exacerbated an already volatile post-election situation”.
“KPTJ made a number of bold and emotive statements, some of which, unfortunately, lacked credible basis. They referred to invented figures in reference to Molo, a Kibaki stronghold, and condemned the electoral commission of Kenya (ECK), when it failed to “provide” evidence to the contrary,” Kreigler said.
Among most vocal individuals behind the KPTJ were Kiai (then chair KNCHR), Wanyeki (director of KHRC), George Kegoro (director of ICJ/K) and Gladwell Otieno of AfriCog.
The following organisations are all KPTJ members, rabid supporters of Raila Odinga presidential ambitions, beneficiaries of the Open Society and donor largesse, opposition leaning ideologically, and enormous political and media influence, over and above apparent bottomless capacity to wage unrelenting court battles on whatever cause they fancy.
Their common denominator is the source of their funding and their common political agenda.
It is anyone’s guess what they can achieve collectively and individually, going by what ICJ has already pulled off in Mwilu’s criminal case proceedings matter.
And now it is said, Maraga and Mwilu do not see eye-to-eye. Mwilu is said to see Maraga hand in her tribulations. To her, the CJ was privy to her arrest and sunctioned it.
In an affidavit filed in court, Mwilu states that following threats made by the president after nullification of his first win, a series of events have targeted the judiciary, specifically the majority judges; claiming this culminated to her arrest. To her, Maraga using the Chief Registrar of Judiciary Anne Amadi made the DCI aware of her now questionable Imperial Bank payments that is key to her current case.