Delivered from justice but led into Temptation?
Well Mr. President, as you take your bow to an un-resounding surplus of jeers and boos, I restrain myself from brandishing invectives at what was only the execution of a constitutional prerogative. Yours was a clever move. Perhaps even sincere and stretched even further, fair judgement call. After confirming from the news about your remission of the sentence against the unholy trinity of contemnors, I could not conceal my shock.
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You tempered justice with compassion or perhaps compulsion. After all, the signed petitions from the rank and file of your political party to exercise your powers under Article 72 of the constitution by granting pardon to the convicted and sentenced contemnors, came as a poisoned chalice being passed around. Share in their peril or shy away at your own peril. But please, Mr. President, let’s not exaggerate the instance, you were in no Pontius Pilate dilemma.
In fact, this cup could have slid you by, yet you chose to embrace it. You could have taken advantage as a leading figure in the party to revert the issue to the internal negotiation channels of the party. Yet still, you could have held on to the petition, but taken the high ground and thrown the weight of your high office behind the judiciary by declaring to stand by the Supreme Court ruling. Yes, your Excellency, you could have upheld the ruling or recused yourself from the extra burden of duplicating constitutional offices over a matter already resolved.
Perhaps I should recount the plot leading to their conviction and subsequent detention. Upon being summoned by the apex court of the land, the contemnors together with their defense attorneys, pleaded guilty and mounted no defense. They surrendered themselves to the clemency of the judges, admitted wrongdoing and buried their heads in shame. This gesture of Mea Culpa on the part of the contemnors seemed to have been rewarded by the Supreme Court judgment which you have now served redundant.
According to legal pundits, the said offence of contempt could attract up to a maximum sentence of 3 years in prison. Yet the contemnors were only sentenced to four (4) months imprisonment. That is a quarter (1/4) of one third (1/3) of that maximum sentence, Mr. President. By any calculus, this was a lenient detention sentence!
In fact, the initial sentence, courted the ire of a critical mass of the public who felt a meta-fraction of a sentence was all but deterrent in the light of the offense at hand. Maligning the identity of Supreme court judges and threatening to rape and murder them on live radio? Sadly, your flock of party faithful’s were bent on putting you to the test. Knowing very well you stood at the edge of the clip, they will still dare you to jump.
For what reason an incumbent party would cheer to actions that undermine their own integrity and lead a protest to set perpetrators of same free, looked at first glance counter intuitive until you exercised your prerogative by remitting the custodial sentence. Looking back, one could not help but say it was an abuse of incumbency. Rather than take the fall for actions that threatened the integrity of the presidency, your presidency, they would rather place you on that slippery path. An oh, how mightily you fell!
But we are reminded that their actions were neither illegal nor was your decision unconstitutional. Indeed, they channeled their grievances lawfully and exhausted the processes of petition. On your part, you did not only receive the petition, you exhausted the bureaucratic labyrinth of consultation by conferring with the Counsel of State. Deciding eventually on a remission of the sentence to serving just one month in Prison, one could either say, you smoldered the rough edges of the judgment or froze it altogether.
However, your actions bear uncanny resemblance to the phrase of your authored novel, ‘My First coup d’état’. Truth be told, this is the first judicial coup d’état. Why because, it basically set aside the ruling of the highest court of the land on a matter that threatened the lives of members of that very court and watered down a landmark judgement meant to sanitize communication on our airwaves.
The argument that you acted within your constitutional right is plausible to all but persuasive to just a few. In fact, Mr. President, some esteemed appointees under your government openly expressed hope that you would duck against the petition missile fired in your direction.
These are some of the reasons for which your act of mercy now threatens to undermine the sanctity of our institutions. First, albeit constitutional, the outcome of your decision sends an ambiguous message and leaves the matter unresolved. Taking precedence over the Supreme Court ruling, citizens are now faced with two judgements- and polarized over which is right. The sad truth is, even if in doubt, they are bound by the power of your decision.
Secondly, by exercising that constitutional prerogative your decision served the interest of a narrow and parochial segment of the population. Whereas the Supreme Court judgement served as a national arbiter to the disputed conduct of the contemnors, pandering to the petition demands of your party loyalists and showing mercy to infractions against one of the chief state institutions, lends your decision as favouring a dissatisfied few despite that their offence was against the whole state.
Third, it recedes faith in the independence of the judiciary and divides the country along power lines. Whereas in substance, your decision does not undermine the authority of the judiciary, it plummets faith within sections of the public especially the political opposition parties to bestow trust in the finality of the rulings of our courts. Need you be reminded, how this country held on with bated breath for the same institution whose ruling you have set aside to confirm your election as president after the 2012 polls?
But Mr. President, the ramifications of your actions are not only confined to the territorial boundaries of this country. It is also bare to all who have a stake in our country’s development. It raises critical questions about whether our president has the thick skin to withstand partisan pressure. In the diplomatic world this not only a leadership virtue but one that underlies considerations for alliances among states.
Your actions must be churning mixed feelings in the thick corridors of diplomatic missions here at home and among our developmental partners whose tax payers money provide you with the fiscal and technical wherewithal to realize the developmental objectives of your government.
How are we to justify our demand for budgetary support to build our institutions when we are actually encouraging a clash rather than fusion of institutions? What happened to the hackneyed words of your American peer, President Barack Obama, when he admonished the building of strong institutions instead of governments? With your decision, we now have the executive looking like a substitute to the judiciary rather than complementing it.
How you will respond to this accusation matters less, most relevant is the fact that the public’s mind is made up. Many are they who praise and defend you for acting constitutionally. But tell us, how does this action protect the constitution? More so, they who have sworn the oath to protect and preserve its sanctity?
If I have failed to see anything good in your act of graciousness, it is not because I am blind to such factors. Rather, I am concerned about how this precedence casts a looming shadow over the future of political legal disputes and the threats to institutional harmony in such instances. As a steward of the state you should not lead citizens into temptation but rather protect them from spell of falling into such.
I am afraid in this instance, your act of mercy has not only delivered the perpetrators from Justice, but also threatens to lead all into the temptation of contempt. While we cannot fault your actions constitutionally, we now must contend with the rapturous fault lines that such a decision creates.
Mark Amaliya Anyorikeya is the Director of Research and Programmes at the Mutatio Institute and can be reached via [email protected]