Gachagua ouster: Petitioners accuse Judiciary of deliberate sabotage to obstruct justice through IT interference

Petitioners have alleged that there was intentional interference with the judicial process in connection with a constitutional petition challenging the validity of impeachment motion which resulted in Mr Rigathi Gachagua losing the Deputy President post. 

In a formal letter to the Chief Registrar of the Judiciary, three(3) petitioners  Miruru Waweru, Andrew Njoroge, and Mutonga Kamau claim that there was an intentional human hand that tampered with the case e-filing system when they filed Petition E568 of 2024.

In a letter addressed to Chief Registrar of the Judiciary Winfridah Boyani Mokaya, they cry foul that there was deliberate effort to sabotage their filing of the petition which delves into the procedural elements of the impeachment.

They claim that delays within the judiciary’s electronic filing system obstructed their case and prevented timely judicial relief.

“… we humbly write to inform you that we have encountered what seems to us as a deliberate effort to sabotage the filing of the matter with a view of defeating justice…,” the petitioners say in the letter dated October 30, 2024.

The petitioners’ case was based on the argument that the impeachment motion, initially passed by the National Assembly, was not sent to the Senate Speaker within the constitutionally mandated two-day window, as required by Article 145(2) of the Kenyan Constitution. According to the petitioners, the delay invalidated the impeachment process. 

However, when they attempted to file their petition on October 18, 2024, they encountered multiple issues in the e-filing process.
The petitioners reported that they successfully uploaded their documents around 1:40am, but faced repeated payment rejections through the court’s system, which is connected to Safaricom’s M-Pesa service and Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB). 

Despite several attempts, the payments were rejected, and an unexpected auto-refund of the filing fees occurred around 9:01am.

In their letter, the petitioners raised serious questions about the functioning of the e-filing system, pointing out issues such as payment rejections, inconsistent timestamps, and unexplained refunds. 

They highlighted one(1) instance where a receipt was generated in the court’s system 10 minutes before they made the payment, suggesting a potential manipulation of the system’s operations. 

“How would three(3) independent entities, the Court, Safaricom PLC, and KCB reverse a transaction without the payee’s approval?” the petitioners asked, implying that the technical issues may have been more than just malfunctions.

They suggested that these delays allowed the National Assembly to approve the President William Ruto's Deputy President nominee Prof Kithure Kindiki, undermining their request for a stay order.

The petitioners asserted that their case was only reviewed by a judge around 2pm, hours after the payment was eventually processed and after the National Assembly had already completed its actions on the nomination. 

This timing, they claimed, rendered their plea for conservatory orders moot. They argued that these discrepancies highlighted what they called a “scandalous scheme to subvert justice.”

The judiciary has yet to respond formally to these allegations. The petitioners copied their letter to Chief Justice Martha Koome, the Deputy Registrar of the Constitutional Court, and Kenyan citizens, signalling the potential implications of this case for public confidence in the judiciary’s digital systems.

The petitioners called for an investigation into these alleged inconsistencies to reinforce the integrity of Kenya’s legal system.

DP Kindiki was sworn-in on November 1, 2024, to take over from ousted Gachagua.