Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen woes over his tongue continue to deepen with a case being filed on Monday to have him declared unfit to hold office.
In the case, the CS is quoted telling a public baraza in Kikuyu Town, Kiambu County, that the police should shoot anyone who comes near a police station and to defend themselves, and that the government would defend any officer who was called to account.
For this, the Mount Kenya Lawyers Association (Gema Watho) asked the court to order the law lecturer out of office and banished for the ‘reckless’ comments.
Gema Watho’s lawyer Wathuta Mwangi in his argument before Justice Lawrence Mugambi yesterday said that Murkomen’s utterances were a clear directive that police officers should shoot on sight to either kill or maim.
He argued that Murkomen had violated the same Constitution that he vowed to uphold and had little or no regard to human life.
“In the face of such recklessness from a Cabinet Secretary, silence would be complicity. The Constitution must speak through the Court, loudly and without ambiguity. A declaration that the first respondent has violated the Constitution and is unfit to continue in office is not extreme; it is essential,”argued Wathuta.
The association sued Murkomen, the Ethics and Anti-corruption Commission, Inspector General of Police Douglas Kanja, National Police Service, Independent Policing Oversight Authority, and Kenya National Commission on Human Rights. It also named the Law Society of Kenya and Mount Kenya Jurists Party as interested parties.
According to Wathuta, both Kenya’s Constitution and international instruments acknowledge that a right to life cannot be taken away and cannot be limited or varied by the State or its agents.
He argued that Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights guarantee the right to life and bar the government or its operatives or agents from exploiting and degrading a human life by either torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment and treatment.
According to the lawyer, the presence of senior police bosses when Murkomen was making the utterances allegedly cemented them as a policy to junior officers.
