What must be done to scale down corruption within government

Task force; the oldest con game in town. Raila Odinga’s intimation at the formation of a task force to address the ogre of corruption was an unobtrusive way of telling us that government functionaries endowed with sticky fingers won’t be going anywhere soon.

Kenya is on a spin, a serious one at that, and the man who is supposed to steady it is perhaps dizzier than most.

The paralysis at the apex of leadership over corruption while stupendous amounts of money continue to disappear from government institutions could be proof Kenya is on auto pilot.

And if the March 9 handshake didn’t mellow or throw Baba off the scent, to suggest a task force will be formed to fight corruption when a combination of the Executive, Parliament, the police, DPP, the Judiciary and the white elephant that is Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) have failed, and might as well have been hitting their feeble heads on concrete, is an insult to Kenyans.

President Uhuru Kenyatta is on record asking; “Munataka nifanye nini” (What do you want me to do?) when pushed to take corruption head-on. His contention then was that he had done all he could to end corruption, but since he did not have the power to torpedo some individuals, he was helpless. What has changed since to convince us he now has the power to go after the thieves?

Last time I checked, the law has not been amended to give him the power to eject a certain cadre of individuals, and that is why I am skeptical about the perfunctory zeal in arresting  individuals who no sooner will they be arraigned in court than they will be out on bail. Thereafter the sluggish justice system will kick in to last ten years, by which time any evidence will have been destroyed.

Authorized payment

Kenyans shouldn’t let their guards down and be fooled by recent arrests; they could be cosmetic, designed to deflate growing public anger. The arrests could be a smokescreen. Nothing convinces me that a clerk in NYS could have authorized payment of millions of shillings without the knowledge of the higher-ups in the ministry.

Probably too, the ceiling wasn’t at the CS’s level. There is every reason for those caught in the NYS and National Cereals and Produce Board scams to remain calm. Land scandals involving senior government officials have been left to quietly go away.

The government paid Sh1.4 billion to Anglo Leasing when it shouldn’t have. Even after Britain jailed directors of the Smith and Ouzman Company for bribing Kenyan government officials to secure a ballot printing tender, nobody got as much as a slap on the wrist here.

A well-known individual, a Jubilee trumpeter to boot, was once accused of receiving huge sums of money from the government for doing nothing; he is a free man and can afford to laugh about it.

Crowning it all, the president openly told off Auditor General for trying to follow some corruption trail to America, and that involved the Eurobond. With all these, and much more, the thieves in government probably thought they could steal and get away with it.

Careless statements

President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Big Four Agenda is a dream in techni-colour if he doesn’t claim some prominent scalps as soon as yesterday. It would be disingenuous to deny the political angle, especially when we factor in careless statements about some quarters needing Sh200 billion to run away with the trophy in 2022.

Nobody can legitimately raise that money in five years, not even are the famed Harambees capable of achieving that feat. With the level of desperation among Kenyans, only Satan can moot the idea of fundraising for someone to go to State House.

To fix corruption, we must fix our laws. They are the weakest link in the war against corruption; what with anticipatory bails and any other bail one could get from the courts in a blink?  The Bill of Rights in the 2010 Constitution is a ticket to freedom for any intelligent criminal who can afford a rookie lawyer. 

We must fix our political system that not only thrives on bribing voters, but also creates room for faceless party funders to demand payback through the award of lucrative government tenders.

More importantly, we must revisit the Constitution to restore some of the powers taken away from the Presidency. We all acknowledge the buck stops with the president every time things go wrong. Why then do we expect a lame duck president to have the panacea?

We are also in this fix because of sycophancy. Situations where those in government gang up to rubbish issues brought up by the Opposition even when they are meritorious partly account for rampant impunity and corruption. Voters cannot escape blame. Most are so feeble minded, a bribe of Sh50 induces them to vote for vampires, then expect the best.

Mr Chagema is a correspondent at The [email protected]