Kenyan MPs tear into anti-graft boss for exposing rot in Parliament

EACC boss Halakhe Waqo. [PHOTO:BONIFACE OKENDO/STANDARD]

The collective anger of MPs at the damning exposé on corruption in the august House exploded on the country’s anti-graft czar when he came face-to-face with the lawmakers during the vetting of Cabinet nominees.

The MPs hijacked the session to dismiss the graft report as “shoddy” and said it contained unverified claims indicting them for making fraudulent claims for mileage and allowances. They said they read malice on the part of the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission.

But they met their match in EACC boss Halakhe Waqo, who dismissed them and said their systems were rotten and needed thorough fixing, or else millions of shillings would continue being lost through fictitious claims.

With Speaker Justin Muturi and his deputy Joyce Laboso watching, MPs tore at the work of the commission and questioned the competence of its chief executive, Waqo, in taming corruption in public offices.

The lawmakers said the commission was using the unpopularity of MPs to paint the elected leaders in bad light.

Moses Cheboi (Kuresoi North) fired the first salvo when he accused the EACC of failing to do “due diligence” before making public the list of MPs whose loan data, including logbooks and title deeds against which they had taken millions in loans, was missing.

“Don’t you really feel embarrassed that in the position you are in, with very good staff, you can so casually draft a letter and names of people with unverified allegations?” posed Cheboi who was listed as having a loan balance of Sh12 million yet his land title was missing from the register of collateral for the loan.

Cheboi pulled out a copy of a title deed from his jacket pocket and waved it at Waqo.

“I am walking around with this document, just in case. It is not true that it is missing. A missing title is not a case of your-word-against-mine. It is either the document exists or it doesn’t,” said Cheboi, who usually steps in for the Speaker and his deputy when they are absent from the House.

Overstepping mandate

Deputy Minority Leader Jakoyo Midiwo (Gem) also accused the commission, which was asked to review systems in the House, of overstepping its mandate.

“This commission is a joke. What we are being treated to is just noise over unverified allegations... It should concern you that your commission is doing things instigated from somewhere else,” said Midiwo, alluding to the perception that the EACC is a lackey of powerful barons and top officials with links to State House.

Midiwo said his colleague, an MP, was kicked out of a funeral in Migori simply because the EACC had listed the lawmakers’ name as among those who had taken millions of public money in loans, but had not surrendered their title deeds or logbooks.

Majority Leader Aden Duale (Garissa Township) added his voice. “The moment you said you shared the drafts and sought their responses, I disagreed with you. Why else would MPs be walking around with title deeds in their pockets? Just look at the Deputy Speaker; she has no idea what you are talking about,” said Duale.

The Deputy Speaker waved her hands in the air and with fervent shakes of her head. She said she was never contacted to give information, before her name was listed among the 23 MPs whose logbooks were missing. Laboso was listed in the EACC report as having a loan balance of Sh5 million.

But Waqo, who had sat quietly scribbling on his notepad, was not cowed.

“We have no responsibility to come and spoil people’s names... We have no capacity to generate names and the rest of the information just for the purposes of spoiling people’s names,” said Waqo.

He insisted that what the EACC submitted was a product of long-drawn investigations and thorough consultation with parliamentary officers.

“We did not come here to pick names. We spent a month here reviewing the systems. We looked at the records. We came up with draft reports and shared with the Parliamentary Service Commission and the staff of Parliament. We got the records and asked that they be checked. We asked that the issues be shared with the members who were mentioned, and asked for responses,” said Waqo.

He insisted that it was not the job of the EACC to trace the MPs, but for the administration of Parliament to ensure the records were well kept.

In the EACC dossier released a week ago, investigators said “most financial records are stored in a dusty registry and the files are not maintained in any order.

“This creates difficulties in retrieval and is a weakness that may lead to concealment of irregularities perpetrated in the financial management process. In most cases, loose documents are moved from one office to the other for processing without recording in register for ease of tracking,” the EACC detectives said in their report.