Why bother hiring a lawyer when you can buy a judge?

When in Nairobi last week, a front-page newspaper photograph caught my attention. This showed a placard-waving chairman of the Constitutional Review Commission of Kenya who called for a clean judiciary. The placard said, “Tunataka Katiba Mpya sasa.” And below this was a caption, “why bother hiring a lawyer when you can buy a judge.”

Nothing is of a greater value to a person than the power of judgment and injustice can only prevail over justice when judges stop believing in God. Any judge who makes a decision by being influenced with money is regarded as an extremely low character in the eyes of not only society at large but even to the Almighty who has created this world with utmost fairness and expects individuals to live by fairness at all times. The Almighty has promised absolute justice to every soul for their deeds in this temporary world. Absolute justice does not mean forgiveness but means that if somebody has done wrong he or she will be punished and if somebody does good he or she will be rewarded according to the magnitude of their deeds and misdeeds. Of course the Almighty has also the quality of being all-forgiving to those who sincerely repent but this is beyond the scope of this write-up.

When judges exercise injustice they commit two major crimes. They directly rebel with God and they wrongly punish innocent individuals for crimes that they have not indulged in. When a country has a number of corrupt judges, they have the capability of bringing the whole system of the judiciary into disarray. In such situations it is no wonder that many people leave courtrooms filled with anger and frustration. Have we not heard of lost files, delayed cases, absence of judges, indefinite postponement of cases etc.

Judges who accept bribes to distort the truth sell themselves to the wealthy knowing very well that by doing so they would cause much harm to aggrieved parties who could be so hurt by their decision that they could even be forced to spend their entire lifetime in extreme poverty or grief. The greedy judge however is only concerned about his own welfare and is least concerned about how an innocent party would suffer for a crime not done.

When judges are corrupt, it gives deceitful individuals and companies an opportunity to venture and be bolder in trying to take innocent parties to court because they know that after all, there is a possibility to buy justice. Many innocent companies give in under such pressure because they don’t have the resources to defend themselves and moreover they know that it would be an uphill struggle fighting a case where the judge has already been bought.

For example there is this case where a Fire Company has threatened legal proceedings against a private company for its role in helping to put a fire off at its premises. The private company has refused to pay its astronomical bill because it had no contract with the Fire Company, had not called the company to render services and has its own internal policy that prescribes that in the event of a fire, only the City Fire authorities had to be called. Notwithstanding the fact that there was no contract, the Fire Company has still threatened legal action. It has also imposed charges for first aid availed to third parties including a civilian injured by stone throwing mobs.

The private company had the fire controlled effectively by the City Fire Brigade whose vehicles were present on the site for over a day. The Tanzania Harbour Authority (THA) also sent a vehicle to assist in putting the fire off and in good faith the private company paid them its nominal dues. However the other private Fire Company had the audacity of invoicing the private company about a week after the fire with a colossal amount including extra charges for services rendered to third parties.

Advocates who know of this case have questioned how a company could even consider taking such a case to court in the absence of any implied or overt agreement but again for some companies there is this expectation from judges who accept bribes to distort the truth. While it is wrong to make an absolute assumption in this case on the intention of the Fire Company, it is in cases like these, when in the absence of any legal back-up companies go to court that one starts suspecting the judiciary.

Judges, the worthy administrators of justice, are like a cat set to take care of a piece of cheese, lest it should be gnawed by mice. One bite of the cat does more damage to the cheese than twenty mice can do and this is why the placard carried “why bother hiring a lawyer when you can buy a judge’ made a lot of sense. Public confidence and real justice should be returned to our courts whereby judges are not only called upon to be fair but should also be seen to be fair.