The Consumer Federation of Kenya (COFEK) is set to move to the Constitutional Court on Wednesday afternoon, seeking to reinstate its petition against the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) Commissioner-General Adan Mohamed.

🇰🇪 Breaking It Down

The lobby confirmed the fresh filing shortly after losing an earlier round at the Employment and Labour Relations Court on July 29.

“This afternoon, COFEK moves to the Constitutional and Human Rights Division of the High Court to reinstate this petition in the public interest,” stated COFEK. From the statement, Justice Jacob Gakeri had just upheld a preliminary objection, striking out COFEK's original petition on May 19, on the grounds that the Employers and Labor Relations Court (ELRC) lacked jurisdiction to handle the matter.

The petition was on the grounds that Adan Mohammed, 62, exceeded the mandatory public service retirement age of 60, and the recruitment process allegedly violated constitutional principles of merit, transparency, and public service integrity.

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The other grounds were that his appointment was in contravention of Articles 10, 73, and 232, which dictate how government decisions must be made and how public officers must conduct themselves

This decision, by and large, shuttered all the possibilities, but COFEK now says t hat the federation has found another way to move around the matter, the Constitutional and Human Rights Division of the High Court proving a viable alternative.

At the centre of it all remains Adan Mohamed, whose appointment as KRA's Commissioner-General has drawn sustained scrutiny from COFEK since the process began, with the lobby group insisting that the questions surrounding his appointment have not disappeared simply because one court sent them elsewhere.

Justice Gakeri's ruling relied heavily on a recent Supreme Court precedent, the July 3rd decision in Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital versus Gikenyi, which significantly narrowed the ELRC's constitutional jurisdiction, limiting it to disputes between directly affected employment parties. Public interest litigants, the Supreme Court clarified, do not automatically qualify under that narrower definition. It is this precise legal gap that knocked out COFEK's petition at the ELRC, despite the substance of its claims never being tested. COFEK has been quick to draw a line between losing on jurisdiction and losing on merit, and the distinction matters here, believing that nothing in Wednesday's ruling touched the actual allegations the lobby has raised against Mohamed's appointment process.

For this reason, the group says it will not back down from this fight any time soon.

📰 Source: Kenyans.co.ke