Refusal to bow out of power shows bar is too low

NAIROBI: While on transit through Singapore on my way to Australia recently, I picked an Australian newspaper with a huge headline reporting that the Speaker of the Australian Parliament had resigned.

Alas, to my surprise the entire saga was triggered by the alleged use of taxpayers' money to hire a helicopter. The costs involved totalled about Sh400,000. Despite the fact that the Speaker paid back the said amount after public criticism of her actions, she still opted to resign due to pressure from the public and Members of Parliament.

In established democracies, the practice is that politicians and senior government officials resign before they are even indicted to avoid the embarrassment of a court suit and most importantly, because they believe they owe it to the people and therefore quit to avoid embarrassing the office they hold.

I don't know about you, but I've heard great things about former Singaporean leader Lee Kuan Yew who single-handedly transformed a port into one of the most advanced economies in the world.

He went against conventional wisdom in many things. Though he had an unflattering view of the media, as Cherian George says in his book; Airconditioned Nation, somewhat things worked in Singapore because the people mattered more to the leaders. Cronyism had no place in Singapore. The leaders just worked for the people. Corruption feeds off cronyism.

In a nutshell, the development of a country depends to a large extent on the integrity and character of its leaders.

The foundations upon which a democratic country can proper depends on three pillars of governance.

An independent and impartial Judiciary, a free and independent media and freedom of association. The first pillar makes it possible for justice to be seen to be done. A compromised Judiciary destroys the fabric of a society.

A credible Judiciary not only ensures harmony by providing the people with an alternative in dispute resolution, it also creates a foundation for transparent and open governance.

A free press is the people's watchdog. Attempts to gag the media is retrogressive. Kenya is still far ahead than many African countries, but I don't think we should just benchmark with African countries.

Freedom of the press helps the public to identify and unearth misuse of public funds. In the developed democracies, the press even helps determine which leader gets elected.

In America for example, during a presidential election, a candidate endorsed by the opinion of the major influential newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post can determine who gets a party nomination or even influence the public in their choices. Could that happen in Kenya?

Through their investigative journalism, the press digs up issues to do with a candidate's integrity and whether he or she is up to the job. President Barack Obama was, to a large extent, helped by the press to ascend to the presidency. Most of his challengers for the party nominations, even though they were much wealthier, had to exit the race due to integrity issues or scandals of other kinds.

To the contrary, in Kenya leaders hardly throw in the towel unless they are forced out by the appointing authority.

When the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission singled out leaders in its infamous corruption list, the President had to literally force members of his government to resign and pave way for investigations. What does that say about our culture? That the bar for probity is low?

In 2009, the British Parliament was rocked by accusations of MPs receiving payments that were not within the law. There was utter consternation when embarrassing details of MPs' expenses and allowance claims were published on the official Parliament website. The media, like a hound that had picked the scent of blood, went after the MPs and forced some of  them, including the popular Speaker Michael Martin, out.

Mr Martin's exit was more because such items as missing addresses of the offending MPs and other crucial details were left out of the list than because of the actual fault of cheating the public. These omissions had resulted in further accusations of unnecessary secrecy and widespread assertions that the most serious abuses would not have come to light had the censored documentation been the only information available. In other words, sin by commission.

How many Kenyan MPs claim per diem for out-of-city travel or sitting allowances yet remain in the city or travel in the opposite direction of the constituency? Or never sit in team meetings but draw allowances?