Judiciary will be training magistrates on electoral preparedness in a bid to ensure electoral justice is served on any issue that will arise during the August polls.
Chief Justice Martha Koome said 120 courts will be handling any election related disputes countrywide, where the magistrates will be trained at.
“We will soon also ask for a training to be mounted for 120 special courts that we gazetted in the judiciary to deal with the electoral offenses because we must continue to read from one script,” she said.
“When a prosecutor is empowered knowing all the ropes in the electoral law it doesn’t make sense if they are appearing before a magistrate who has no clue about what a kims kit or an electoral offense is. We must move in tandem,” furthered Koome.
She also said the cases will be presented to the magistrate who should be able to understand all the processes of election and the law.
“There is a magistrate ready to hear whenever an offense happens anywhere across the country and they know it should be given priority.”
Koome further revealed that she directed the magistrates handling hate speech matters under the National Cohesion and Integration(NCI) Act to finalize all pending hate speech matters by June.
“We are also working on a plan to operationalize hate speech courts in hotspot areas to ensure that they are ready all the time to hear all these matters,” she furthered.
The Compendium is a tool for prosecutors when guiding investigators and prosecuting Election and Hate Speech offenses.