Author: NLM Correspondent

By George Kegoro Amid questions surrounding the award by the government of a contract to mobile telephone company Safaricom to install a communication system for the police, it transpires that there is an ongoing court case relating to the same matter, and the High Court issued orders reserving frequencies that Safaricom now wants to use to roll out this contested contact. The story dates back to 2002 when the Communication Commission of Kenya (CCK), with current Ainabkoi MP, Samuel Chepkonga, as the Director-General, issued an international tender for the provision of services for a national trunked network. The tender sought…

By TNLM Writer Never has Kenya been in billion-dollar feeding frenzies as is happening now. Every conceivable law is being broken; structures and procedures are being trampled on; the public interest does not matter. It is truly “our time to eat”. Where the money is too much to carry in sacks, there are now Chinese companies keen and willing to act as conduits for the payment of kickbacks. The loot is transferred to Dubai from where the loot trickles back to Kenya. Multinational companies from the West now invariably partner with Chinese firms in order to allow for consummation of…

By Vincent Chahale One momentous occasion in the afternoon of January 26, 2016 passed by unnoticed within the legal circles. Perhaps it was the goings on in the Judiciary then that are to blame. The event was happening when grievous allegations had been made against a judge of the Supreme Court and therefore the listlessness with which the profession may have welcomed the news is understood. The Honourable Chief Justice on this afternoon launched the Sentencing Policy Guidelines which are meant to guide judicial officers when sentencing. These guidelines were developed by a task force established by the CJ in…

Otieno Kenyatta In the recently concluded African Union Summit in Ethiopia, outgoing chairman Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe gave a rousing speech. He seemed to be telling the world that he still has the strength to rule his country for some years to come, or in his own words, until God calls him home. Let me digress. In the African society, the man is the head of the home. All a man needed to do as he entered his home is to cough or shout at his dog and everyone fell into shape. His itinerary was well known and everyone prepared…

By Elsante Mnzava Other than clients and employees, documents are a law firm’s life-blood. There is seldom a working day that a lawyer doesn’t create, edit, share, manage or store a document of some sort. In fact, many law firms have attempted to use some sort of “system” to manage documents, henceforth broadly referred to as “Document Management Systems” (DMS). Yet, despite the prevalent knowledge of DMS systems amongst Kenya law-firms, most have stuck to what we call “legacy systems” which generally comprise servers at a law firm’s facility onto which documents are stored. Examples of these are iManage, Worldox…

2016 is the 25th anniversary of Kenya’s democratic era as it is, more or less, for most of sub-Saharan Africa, an appropriate time for an overview of democratic progress made and not, in each country and the region as a whole. The basic story is that sub-Saharan Africa overall is more democratic in 2016 than it was in 1991 but, as is now widely recognised, that progress has appeared to reach a plateau for most of the continent around 2005.  Since then, progress has even receded in some respects and to differing degrees for some countries of the region. The…

Sunday Memba “Remember this: a story that must be told never forgives silence. Speech is the mouth’s debt to a story,’’ Femi Adaro is told by his grandmother in Okey Ndibe’s, Arrows of Rain. This appeal for sanity to prevail in social media platforms must not fall to deaf ears. For a while now, even a blind man could see that a regulation to curb the negative effects of social media was coming. Social media is the current El Dorado of information, and it is vital to distinguish what type is palatable. People who shout “fire” in a crowded building…

Wilfred Mutubwa In a re-enactment of the epic Greek mythology, the Trojan War, celebrated Hollywood actor Brad Pitt stars as Achilles, the nemesis of the Trojan prince, Hector.  In the movie Troy, Achilles, seething with a mixture of both anger and grief following the brutal killing of his cousin by Hector in the mistaken belief that he had slayed Achilles, rides his chariot to the gates of Troy and calls out Hector to a one-on-one duel. Before the fight begins, Achilles and Hector, belligerents with immense respect for each other, enter into a pact. Hector proposes to Achilles, which proposal…

Kenya’s next election happens in about 17 months and, many have begun to fret regarding the credibility of the yet-to-be-conducted poll, understandably so, considering our election history. The peaceful transition of power after elections last year in Nigeria, Tanzania, Zambia and Burkina Faso gave Africans all over the continent hope that democracy still exists. On the other hand, Burundi and Ethiopia were at hand to remind us that “democracy” is relative – Pierre Nkurunziza’s forced a third term and Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn retained power with almost 100 per cent of the vote. And, just as the world predicted,…

“A written Constitution is the legislation or compact which establishes the State itself…it is a document of immense dimensions, portraying, as it does, the vision of the peoples’ future. The makers of a Constitution do not intend that it is amended as often as other legislation; indeed, it is not unusual for provisions of the Constitution to be made amendable only by special procedures, imposing more difficult forms and heavier majorities of the members of the legislature’ – Amissah P in “Attorney-General v Dow (1992) B.L.R 199 at 129” If politicians had their way with the Constitution, we would barely…