NAIROBI
Kenyan activists on Thursday took the speakers of the country's two chambers of parliament to court on charges of violating the law by disobeying a court order.
Nairobi High Court Judge Isaac Lenaola postponed the hearing until April 23 after efforts to summon the speakers to court had failed.
"Let the respondents be served [with summons] and directions taken," he said.
Prominent activists Okiah Omtatah and Wycliffe Nyakina are accusing National Assembly and Senate Speakers Justin Muturi and Ekwe Ethuro, respectively, of disobeying a court order.
A court had ruled against summoning Judicial Service Commissioners to appear before the National Assembly Legal Committee, which was probing sacked Registrar of the Judiciary Gladys Shollei.
In their court petition, the activists argue that instead of complying with the court order, the speakers went ahead and summoned the Commissioners to appear before the parliamentary committee.
Omtatah and Nyakina want the court to determine whether or not the two speakers had broken the law by disobeying the court order.
"The speakers of the National Assembly [and] the Senate have not received summons because their security people have been blocking the [summon] server," Omtatah told Anadolu Agency.
He said an official court server had tried on three consecutive days earlier this week to serve the summons to the speakers but had failed because of the security surrounding them.
Joseph Ndombi, a 26-year-old activist, appealed to the speakers to set a good leadership example by attending the court hearing.
"The speakers should just obey the court and come because what they are doing is not good for the common man," he told AA outside the courthouse.
"If a common man sees that these speakers who are in the forefront of institutions who are making laws and the same ones who [don’t] want to come to court, it is a bad precedent," said the activist.
"They should put in responses and come to court to defend themselves," he added.
Speaker Muturi, himself a former magistrate, told reporters earlier this month that lawmakers will not obey "idiotic" court orders.
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