Saturday, June 09, 2012

Our judges truly need prayers

Our judges truly need prayers
By The Post
Sat 09 June 2012, 13:00 CAT

DIVINE intervention is required in our Judiciary because things are out of control, things have gone horribly wrong. Integrity, honesty and leadership are no longer there. What we have today is a Judiciary dominated by crooks, by dishonest people who have no problems telling lies.

And we can say this with confidence because some of them have lied about us and have continued to do so without shame. And at the helm of this disgraced Judiciary is Ernest Sakala. Truly, our judges need prayers.

And Sakala's request to the Church to pray for judges is timely. As Sakala has correctly observed, we need to remember our Judiciary in our prayers, and to pray for the judges especially. This is so because some of them have lost "the moral fabrics of the adjudicators".

Our judges truly need Bibles because some of the things they do can only be done by people with evil minds. The Holy Bible teaches us that "it is wrong for a judge to be prejudiced. If he pronounces a guilty person innocent, he will be cursed and hated by everyone.

Judges who punish the guilty, however, will be prosperous and enjoy a good reputation" (Proverbs 24:24-25); "Don't give evidence against someone else without good reason, or say misleading things about him" (Proverbs 24:28); "If you plant the seeds of injustice, disaster will spring up, and your oppression of others will end" (Proverbs 22:8); "When justice is done, good people are happy, but evil people are brought to despair" (Proverbs 21:15); "It is not right to favour the guilty and keep the innocent from receiving justice" (Proverbs 18:5); "Condemning the innocent or letting the wicked go - both are hateful to the lord" (Proverbs 17:15); "Respected people do not tell lies, and fools have nothing worthwhile to say" (Proverbs 17:7); "Do not plough the ground to plant seeds of injustice; you may reap a bigger harvest than you expect" (Sirach 7:3); "Do not set your heart on being a judge, unless you have the strength of character it takes to put an end to injustice…" (Sirach 7:6).

Yes, as Sakala says, judges need prayers. But so do the people who are victims of our judges' corruption and abuse of power. They too need prayers, probably more than the judges do. There is no need for Sakala to make it seem as if the judges are victims, are on the receiving end.

No! They are not victims - the victims are the people who have been made to suffer the consequences of their corruption and abuse of judicial power. It is important to admit things when they are wrong and you avoid embarrassment.

Sakala says that if the reforms in the Judiciary mean dismissing the Chief Justice and judges, then he was not competent to comment. The current Kenyan Chief Justice has no problems seeing to it that corrupt judges are dismissed, including the Chief Justice. It's not okay to keep people in public offices they have disgraced.

There should be a resolute effort to hunt every such man out of the position he has disgraced. Our plea is, not for immunity to but for the most unsparing exposure of everyone, including judges, who betrays his trust. And in saying this, we are not in any way preaching hatred against anyone.

We don't believe in the law of hate. We may not always be true to our ideals, but we believe in the law of love, and we believe you can do nothing with hatred. We would like to see a time when man loves his fellow man and forgets all other descriptions. We will never be civilised until that time comes.

We are told in the bible, as quoted above, that it is wrong for a judge to be prejudiced. And if he pronounces a guilty person innocent, he will be cursed and hated by everyone. These are some of the things that are today backfiring on our judges.

For too long they have been passing judgments that don't make sense, that are corrupt, that favour certain interests. And today because of this they are being cursed, they are hated, as the bible says, by everyone.

Dismissing incompetent and corrupt judges should be part of any serious reform of the Judiciary. Sakala doesn't want this to happen. He wants every corrupt and incompetent judge to remain in their jobs! Why? For what? What type of reasoning is this? What type of reforms is Sakala talking about or calling genuine?

Genuine reforms take out everything that is rotten, that is not working and replaces it by something new that promises to work. The truth is that Sakala is defensive about his Judiciary because he is responsible for the rot that has been going on, that is going on. Sakala has failed to provide the required competent leadership our Judiciary requires.

And he can't today claim to have performed his duties with sufficient competence, honour and integrity. We say this because in our own case, Sakala has given contradictory statements which border on lies and dishonest. Honesty is required in every leadership position, more so in the Judiciary where there has to be adjudication of differences among people.

In other countries Sakala would have been dismissed from the Judiciary a long time ago for unprofessional behaviour. Sakala is today defending that which cannot be reasonably defended because he is part of it. Sakala is at the helm of this rot. Why shouldn't he be dismissed?

The Zambian taxpayer cannot be expected to pay for that type of service. More is expected of our judges because they are well-remunerated and well-protected. In fact, the people are not protected against some of their corrupt decisions.

The people need more protection today from corrupt judges than the judges need from the people. And more prayers should be directed towards the people than the judges because the people need more protection, more help than the judges who are in a very powerful position. Nothing can happen to them.

If you want to make them accountable they simply use their courts to protect themselves from being made to account for their misconduct, their transgressions and mistreatment of others. What further protection do our judges need when they have proved themselves to be untouchable, omnipotent?

No institution can touch our judges today. They can lord over others but no one can ever attempt to straighten them. Probably the only prayers they need more of are those intended or designed to stop them from mistreating others, from abusing the judicial powers vested in them.

It is interesting to see some of the worst criminals in robes pretending to be victims. What victims can these corrupt elements claim to be?

It's good Sakala's contract which was given to him by Rupiah Banda after he had reached retirement age is coming to an end in August. There will be no need to renew it. The man has nothing to offer but destruction.

The anarchy we are seeing today in the nation is as a result of his failure to lead the Judiciary in the right way. Look at those very close to him and examine their behaviour! They are the most indisciplined. They are the ones being accused of corruption. What type of Chief Justice is this? What type of leadership is Sakala providing to our Judiciary?

It is good religious leaders went to offer our judges Bibles and prayers. We hope they will read those Bibles and learn the teachings and wisdom contained in them and change their behaviour.

We need religious institutions to continue to be the conscious of society, a moral custodian and a fearless champion of the interests of the weak and downtrodden. All our key religious leaders and institutions in this country have in a very strong way called for reforms in the our Judiciary.

Sakala doesn't see the urgency of this and thinks it's business as usual claiming the reforms in the Judiciary started long before the public outcry as he has said before. It's good he at least recognises that there is a public outcry for reforms in the Judiciary.

But instead of being defensive, he should be asking himself what has generated this public outcry. Of course, Sakala tries to play down every call for reform and he tries to play semantics with the so-called genuine reforms. But who has defined these so-called genuine reforms?

We are lucky as a nation that the reforms will not come from Sakala - the matter is beyond him. And as the Law Association of Zambia correctly observed, the current leadership of the Judiciary has no capacity to carry out the reforms required in our Judiciary by our people.

And it is for this reason that Sakala and his cabal of incompetent and corrupt judges must go. If Sakala knew what genuine reforms are required and had implemented them, there wouldn't be this public outcry for reforms. He can't today claim that nobody in the Judiciary is resisting reforms, particularly genuine reforms.

They are resisting and they are using their offices to do that. And if there was no resistance of genuine reforms, Sakala wouldn't be Chief Justice today because genuine reforms would have swept him aside a long time ago.

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1 Comments:

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