A petition challenging the recruitment of the next chief executive officer of the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) will proceed to full hearing after the Employment and Labour Relations Court rejected a bid by a key applicant to join the case.
The court dismissed an application by Dr Adano Salad Kadubo who had sought to be enjoined as an interested party in a petition filed by Thomas Musomi Oyugi against TSC and several state agencies.
The judge held that the issues Dr Kadubo wished to raise were largely identical to those already raised by the petitioner. He added that the documents Dr Kadubo filed did not disclose any new information.
“The petition can be justly decided without his involvement as a party to the proceedings. I come to the inevitable conclusion that the intended intervention application be and is hereby dismissed.”
In court papers, Dr Kadubo said he had a long-standing interest in succeeding former CEO Nancy Macharia. He noted that when the position was advertised, Macharia was still in office and was not due to retire until June 6.“There was no vacancy in the office at the time. I expected that once the position became vacant, the Commission would advertise it in newspapers with nationwide circulation,” he stated.
He added that vacancy ought to have been declared in the Kenya Gazette before the recruitment process commenced.
He argued that TSC acted unfairly by publishing the advertisement only in the My Government newspaper and not in any other media outlets. “That is why I was not aware of the advertisement,” he said.
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Dr Kodubo further stated that that advertising a position that was not yet vacant was unconstitutional and amounted to creating up a non-existent office, which betrayed the principle of the rule of law. He maintained that with an active chief executive officer already in place, no party would suffer prejudice if the process was halted pending the resolution of the constitutional issue.
TSC, however, opposed his application through an affidavit sworn by its chairperson, Dr Jamleck Muturi John, who argued that Dr Kadubo had not met the legal threshold to join the case. He added that apart from Dr Kadubo’s personal ambition to become CEO, his application introduced nothing new.
Dr Muturi said that while the main petition was a matter of public interest, the application by Dr Kodubo sought to advance an individual agenda. The court agreed, finding that Dr Kadubo failed to meet the strict legal threshold for joining a constitutional petition.
By Our Reporter
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