The recent arrest of Samburu Governor Moses Lenolkulal on suspicion of corruption and misuse of public funds is yet another of how far we have to go in order to make devolution work for Kenyans. The governor will have his day in court, as mandated by the Constitution. But the damage has already been done. What the government alleges that the governor and his collaborators did is enough grounds for any self-respecting public official to resign. Except that this is Kenya, and no one resigns from office. And given the track record of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Governor Lenolkulal has a strong incentive to hang tight. In due course the case will be thrown out, on account of shoddy investigations and lack of evidence.
After several months of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s declared war on corruption, it is still unclear what his theory of change is. Let me explain. You see, if you want to change a system – like Kenyatta is trying to do by ending endemic corruption in the public sector – you need to understand how specific actions lead to specific outcomes. That is what I mean by theory of change. Does Kenyatta believe that all we have to do to end corruption in the country is to prosecute everyone suspected of graft? If that is the case, do we have the capacity to do so? What would that mean for a political system as thoroughly corrupt as ours? How many governors, Cabinet Secretaries, or Members of Parliament would survive a serious effort to jail all those convicted of corruption? What are possible alternatives to this approach to fighting graft? Is corruption a law enforcement or political issue?
Kenyatta’s lack of a coherent theory of change is mirrored by the actions of the DPP. Noordin Haji is yet to land a high-ranking conviction. The corrupt godfathers of our politics havequickly learned that he is all heat and no light.
There are no easy answers to the questions I pose above. However, I would also add that so far our approach to fighting corruption has been misguided. We created a toothless Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission. The office of the DPP is at once empowered, but also hampered by the fact that if they did their job well, the entire political edifice would collapse – from chief’s offices right to the top at State House. And so the DPP has to be selective in the choice of cases to prosecute, partly to send a message that blatant corruption will not be tolerated. But this approach is failing for two reasons. First, it is not credible to arrest a few individuals like Governor Lenolkulal when it is common knowledge that nearly all the 47 governors routinely pilfer public money. Who is fooling who? Selective arrests will only continue to fuel the ill-advised notion that the fight against public theft is being used to settle political scores.
Second, as long as some people in the national government can get away with corruption, it will be difficult to fight the graftamong lower-ranked officials. It is foolish to imagine that we can have a two-track public sphere – in which the privileged can be corrupt and get away with it, while other officials are not allowed to steal public funds and get punished when they do so. Political scientists call this rule by law, as opposed to rule of law. It is only possible in dictatorships. But the last time I checked, Kenya is not a dictatorship. Which is to say that Kenyatta must decide: does he want to preside over a corrupt system or not? He can’t have it both ways.
- The writer is an assistant professor at Georgetown University
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