Why the court order was the best remedy to the teacher’s strike

The four month old Jubilee government has encountered a number of challenges since the Supreme Court’s ruling gave a node to their highly contested presidential election win. However, one that goes to the root of the Jubilee government manifesto and threatens the fulfillment of the promises the Jubilee alliance made to Kenyans during the tumultuous campaigns is the now two weeks old teachers’ national strike orchestrated by KNUT and KUPPET.  Despite raising grave issues that warrant a critical examination on the part of the government, the teachers’ strike comes at a time when the jubilee government is still taking root after the recently concluded elections. Considered the father of all the strikes in independent Kenya, the most conspicuous sides of the strike are the no-negotiations, give-us-the-money-we-give-you-the-strike parts with teachers unequivocally demanding a full settlement of their claim and the government as expected alleging lack of money. Kenyans have hitherto not been told in which side of the coin the truth is.

However, one thing has become very clear over the past two weeks- that the strike will continue as long as Kenyans are alive and the government hasn’t given in to the teachers’ demands. That’s why if only it was honoured; the industrial court order instructing government to enter into prompt negotiations with the teachers’ body and report to court on July 15, 2013 on the deliberations was the best solution to the strike. Teachers’ strike is too serious a business to be left to the teachers on one hand and government on the other. It is the defined traditional duty of the courts being social engineers to intervene and correct an anomaly in society whenever it arises or is about to crop up.

With teachers in the streets and the government in boardrooms, Kenyans and their school-going children will have to wait longer for the normalcy to return. I believe the teachers appear to have no clear course of action on whether they base their strike on the 1997 Collective Agreement or the Jubilee laptop program. Let the government act as soon as possible to avert the looming crises and invite the teachers to the discussion table, make its offer and let the teachers counter offer and come up with a binding solution at the end of it all. The court order however was the best proposed solution but in a country where the citizens have come from an untrustworthy system to a reformed one, the memories of government using the courts to silence dissent and opposition still haunt them.

Ekai Nabenyo is a law student at the university of Nairobi and blogs at  

www.ekainabenyo.blogspot.com