Criminal lawfare and judicial complicity: Ruto’s new authoritarian toolkit
by admin on | 2025-08-02 16:48:29 Last Updated by admin on 2025-08-27 00:06:13
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Silently, Kenya is witnessing a return to repression, this time round, the batons, teargas and live bullets are backed up by legal briefs and a veneer of constitutionalism. The repression is not only led by the executive arm but also wears a new face, one of legal respectability, or let us just call it for what it is, a judicially sanctioned repression. Today’s repression comes dressed in judicial robes and judicial vestments. Whereas Moi openly tortured, detained or abducted his critics most of the time without trial or charged them under Sedition laws, where they were automatically denied bail, Ruto has picked a more sophisticated, more insidious option, clocked in the legal process. Ruto picks criminal lawfare in his authoritarian toolkit and presents his opponents in court. Criminal lawfare is the deployment of the criminal justice system as a weapon to silence dissent. Criminal lawfare falls within the larger scheme of Autocratic Legalism or hybrid Authoritarianism or Abusive constitutionalism, which refer to the use of the law to subvert democracy, to do away with checks and balances, to fight the opposition, to silence any critic and to silence the media. Ruto’s insidious option started with the co-optation of the prosecutorial and investigative arms of the criminal justice system (the office of the director of prosecution and the national police service arm), which were meant to be independent. As such, the two institutions, or Siamese twins, have been militarised and are readily deployed to perform the president’s desires. These Siamese twins readily arrest critics for laughable charges and apply in court to detain them as they commence investigations or use their favourite terms, national security and public order. Unfortunately, and regrettably, in all this, the judiciary cannot be said to be an innocent bystander. It has indirectly collaborated with the Siamese twins in their iniquitous conduct and allowed them to become ‘unruly horses or rapid dogs on the loose’. It is a tragedy that an institution tasked with being the guardian of the Constitution and meant to check the executive’s overreach appears increasingly comfortable in playing along. Whether by design, a progovernment attitude of the individual magistrates, inertia, fear or genuine errors, the judiciary has accorded Ruto enough legroom to play around and accorded him an opportunity to win matches against the Constitution and the people. For example, how do you explain a court tolerating a charge of incitement to violence against a protester who chanted Ruto must go? How do you explain a court dismissing a state’s application to detain arrested persons and proceeding to impose a cash bail of Ksh 300,000? Or that of a protester slapped with a bond of Ksh 10M without an option of bail? Although the court might dismiss the charges at the end of the trial, Ruto would have achieved his objective and instilled fear in any dissident. Although Nyayo torture chambers no longer exist, Ruto achieves his objectives and this time round, with the judicial imprimatur. So what Moi achieved through the Nyayo torture chambers, Ruto achieves in the courts. He hauls critics with exaggerated charges into court to suppress opposition, stifle protest, and maintain control. Therefore, it is the same script with a new cast. Ruto and Criminal lawfare: From cybercrimes to terrorism offences Ruto’s first two years in office have been marked with significant opposition, especially from the young generation, mostly from his unkept promises. Despite riding on the wave of economic changes, reducing the public debt Read more...
