Theft in public office is the handiwork of bad politics we have embraced

Theft in public office is the handiwork of bad politics that we Kenyan’s have embraced. [Photo: Courtesy]

Throughout the world, it is possible to find thieves and corrupt individuals in government.

These characters abuse their positions to eat at the seams of public finance. They rob with the stealth of rats.

They are, however, the exception rather than the rule. Whenever they are caught, they are flashed out and jailed. Theft in such government is, therefore by default rather than by design.

In Kenya theft in government is by design. Thieves are appointed not to work, but to steal.

The entire state machinery is deliberately populated to support theft. The appointing authorities create stealing opportunities in every State office.

They must find the right person for the job. Hence, the homeboys syndrome. When we can’t crack it, it is because the thing is not limited to the individuals we have caught in the act.

It is a whole complex State-owned syndicate. Such is the architecture of power, theft, prosperity and poverty in failing and failed States. And Kenya is on the road towards becoming an amazing failed State.

Failed and failing states have lost focus of why people get jobs in government. Stealing is the only objective.

Everything else is a smoke screen. If they come up with a project, it is only a cover up – an excuse to legitimise the stealing.

Accordingly, we can only give the job to “one of us.” If he will not steal, he will be removed. Equally, if he will not spread the benefits he must go.

Everyone must clearly understand that stealing is the main objective and benefit of being in government.

You begin by stealing political power. The election must be stolen. You are now ready to steal everything else, with help from your proverbial forty thieves.

If one is caught, you cover up for them. Or, you may divert attention to something else. You must rescue your agent. You cannot punish them. If you don’t, the truth could come out.

For, they are a part of your bandit economy and buccaneer government. To remove them is to use a machete on your stealing hand.

Theft in public office in Kenya is, accordingly, the handiwork of the bad politics that the country has embraced. We are a bandit economy by choice. Banditry is our unstated official policy.

Rebuffed Everywhere.

In the mid-1990s, Mzee Moi often told us, “Siasa ni maisha. Siasa mbaya, ni maisha mabaya. Siasa nzuri, ni maisha mazuri.”

 Politics inform the quality of life in a country. Bad politics mean poor living. Conversely, good politics will lead to good standards of living.

The Moi government was smarting under the weight of an assertive emergent Opposition and a hostile international community.

Multiparty democracy had only recently been restored, as a benefit of the end of the Cold War. Foreign Western partners had abandoned their blue-eyed boy of East Africa, calling for “transparency and accountability” as a precondition for financial cooperation.

The government was dead broke, the national economy in a free fall. Senior State officials, clad in expensive designer suits, gallivanted from one Western city to the other with the beggar’s cap in their hands.

Their ballooned bellies lead the way to the IMF, and from here to the World Bank and to the Paris Club of lenders.

They were rebuffed everywhere they went, being sent back home to style up. It was a long dark night, during which Kenyans saw their economy collapse at the behest of a stealing government.

Life was bad. And it was politics-driven. Years have come and gone. Most of the stalwarts who fought for change have gone, too. And I will not blame you if you feel that you miss the Opposition.

For the country continues to stumble from one false dawn to the other. The Opposition is coaxed into shaking hands with economic banditry and invited to eat with it.

There is no morning of fulfillment in sight as yet. Even people in the shrine and the academy encourage you to look for the bandits, to shake hands with them. The golden Jubilee cup five years ago has morphed into a poisonous cup of tea.

There was once a famous radio commercial that said Kenya was a tea country. Every time was teatime. We remain so much a tea country.

We take tea at home, at the local cafeteria and even share some with the traffic policeman at the roadblock. And now each sip is a regular dose of poison. While we have always been the home of financial scandals, nothing compares to the present poisoned cup of tea.

When 180 million kilograms of deadly sugar are smuggled into the country, there are four kilos of poison for each of Kenya’s 45 million citizens.

Before you leave home you must, therefore, administer upon yourself your first dose of mercury and copper for the day. You take more doses as the day progresses.

There is the 10 o’clock tea at work, or a leisurely moment with friends at a cafeteria. You have your high tea at 4 o’clock and courtesy tea everywhere.

Friends, we are all slowly drinking our way to the grave, courtesy of the politics we have elected.

Choices have consequences, we were once told.

We are now paying the price of having a bad government whose captains are wrongly focused on themselves.

Those in charge have never understood why governments are constituted in society. When we feed on poison disguised as sugar, we ought to ask where our government was when this poison got here. Yet, more worrying is not that the government would appear to have absconded from duty.

It is, rather, the reality that the poisoned chalice in your lap is the result of someone’s doing in government.

Disturbing links have been established between the poisoned chalice, a timber firm and powerful people in government. In the past, Kenyans hated slavery but loved the slave masters.

Today they hate death but love the death squads.

- The writer is a strategic public communications adviser. [email protected]