Chief Justice blames misogyny for corruption claims

Kenya’s most senior judge has hit out following recent allegations of corruption and incompetence within the judiciary. ‘In all these 22 years I’ve been a judge and a Chief Justice, nobody has ever approached me with a bribe. I would have them arrested,’ Martha Koome told BBC News. The country’s first female Chief Justice has recently been accused of failing to properly investigate and tackle allegations of bribery and corruption within the judiciary. Some Kenyans have been referring to ‘jurispesa’ – a corruption of the legal term jurisprudence and pesa (the Swahili word for money) – implying there is corruption in the judiciary. But she defended herself and her colleagues, asking anyone making such accusations to present the evidence to the security agencies or to the judicial oversight commission. She said the claims were ‘supposed to lower my credibility. It is supposed to distract me. I know who I am and I know what I have done and what I am going to do.’ Kenya’s judiciary has long been marred by claims of corruption and in 2021, Koome said that corruption was ‘a national embarrassment in and out of the judiciary’. She said that some of the criticism she faced was because of her gender. ‘It is total misogyny. It is total chauvinism.’