A group of eight lawyers has filed a petition in the High Court seeking injunction orders restraining the president from assenting to the Finance Bill and Appropriation Bill, 2024 pending the hearing and determination of the petition.
The petition which is filed under a certificate of urgency is seeking the court’s injunction to issue an order of stay to stop the application of sections 39(1) and 39 A(3) of the Public Finance Management Act CAP 412 A until the matter is heard and determined by the court.
The lawyers Ndegwa Njiru, Fanya Mambo Kinuthia, Peter Koria, Ishmael Muriirhi, Jacklie Wanjiru, Charles Mabiru, Lempaa Suyianka and Mt. Kenya Jurists Association urge the court to prohibit the government from stopping from implementing the provisions contained in the Finance Bill, 2024 until the matter is heard and determined.
According to the documents presented before the court, the lawyers state that the budget-making process of the financial year 2024/2025 has been “characterized by controversy, bitter hatred and political contestation since the Cabinet Secretary for finance published the Bill on May 9, 2024, before submitting estimates of the revenue of the National Government for the said financial year to the National Assembly.”
They are accusing the Cabinet Secretary for Finance Njuguna Ndung’u of wilfully failing to comply with article 221(1) of the constitution for no lawful or effective public participation in the Bill has taken place because the government is effectively asserting powers to raise additional revenue without a budget authorized by the constitution.
The Finance CS published the estimates of revenue on July 6, 2024, after the National Assembly Budget Committee had completed a public participation hearing and submitted its report to the National Assembly.
According to them (petitioners), the said budget-making process has been spoilt by the involvement and dictation of the policy preferences of foreign governments and cooperations spearheaded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which has taken effective control of Kenya’s National Treasury to the detriment of the sovereignty of the Kenyan citizens in matters of public finance.
The government seeks to rush the budgeting process and implement it unconstitutionally subversing the principles of finance and procedures set out under articles 201, 221 and 222 of the constitution.
They are saying that the orders are necessary to ensure that “unlike in 2023- a budget was made unlawfully lacking legitimacy on account of punitive taxation victimizing economic policies and value free right wing capitalism.”
They are pointing the finger at the Members of Parliament affiliated to Kenya Kwanza coalition that the National Assembly surrendered the budget-making mandate to the executive by acting as helpless agents of the Finance Cabinet Secretary.
“It is prudent that the controversy over the Finance Bill, 2024 is not aggrevated by the implementation of a budget that is unlawful or lacking in political legitimacy,” read part of the document.
The petitioners relate the petition to weighty national matters of importance seeking it referred to the Chief Justice Martha Koome’s empanelment of a Bench of five judges to hear and determine it as a matter of extreme urgency.