Lack of political goodwill entrenching corruption in Kenya

NAIROBI: Adage has it that it is pointless flogging a dead horse. Similarly, you cannot make a frog walk and neither can you make a snail gallop. It is in the nature of the latter two to move as they were created to do without variation.

That analogy is descriptive of Kenya’s political elite today. Overall, they are dead horses, frogs and snails, all heaped into one. Flogging a dead horse would not make it move no matter how hard one tries. It is thus pointless urging the current administration to do things it has clearly indicated through its inactivity are above its ken. The buzzwords are ‘corruption’, ‘clueless’ and ‘intransigence’, so let us stick with those for the moment.

The refrain on corruption has been going for so long that if today all we can get are more revelations of sleaze and sordid procurement at the tax payers’ expense, those in authority and positions to stop the vice are clueless and out of depth. The inference, on the other hand, is that they condone the practice by the manner of their intransigence and deportment.

We understand that politics is a delicate game of numbers, alliances and deceit, but there are times when national interest and image override these considerations; like now.

The day one gets a frog to walk majestically will be the day corruption will jump out the window and leave Kenya alone. Many in Jubilee, representing the whole, have been jumping from one scandal to another. Entreaties to go slow from those concerned over the fate of ailing Kenya don’t register, because it is not in these individuals nature to walk slowly. 

One would have thought that after Nandi Hills MP Alfred Keter blew the whistle on the Standard Gauge Railway scam in 2014, after the hullabaloo that followed the payment of Sh1.4 billion to Anglo Leasing, complaints on skewed government appointments, the scams that were the Sh13 billion National Social Security Fund and Tassia II projects, those with sticky fingers would go slow.

But they didn’t because the authorities are inert. So inert a further Sh791 million simply disappeared from the National Youth Service, and nobody is willing to open the can of worms for fear of what might come out. That is not the last of the story; there is more to it. Early in the year we were told a serious war had been declared on corruption and a few individuals immediately became prisoners of war. Unfortunately, the weapons of mass destruction of public resources we were told they had turned out to be a hoax, well, Iraq style; we are still waiting.

What hurts is that the generals who led us into the war on corruption are backtracking, petrified at the sight of blood and the possible carnage from a drawn out battle. Then there are the slimy snails.

These are people, hangers-on in Jubilee who can’t catch up or catch on, never. They don’t understand the changing political dynamics, and to cover up their inadequacies, they choose to rant, like the deranged at market places. Yes, I once heard a madman call another madman mad and laugh so hard I laughed too.