Anti-graft law should be amended before it legitimises corruption

By Billow Kerrow

What a week! The Wikileaks cables revealed the official ‘break-in’ at KICC in December 2007 that precipitated the infamous post-election violence, which put us on the brink of anarchy.

The subsequent failure by Parliament to enact appropriate legislation to prosecute the suspects triggered the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) to institute its proceedings in The Hague exposing us to international ridicule.

As if to demonstrate our intended sojourn in this ‘failed state’, we shut down a key institution of public accountability, the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC) through a hurriedly contrived law, further denting our international image. All this comes on top of the shameful images of famine ravaging several parts of our country, not for lack of resources, but policy failures and lack of accountability.

Just what legacy will the President and the Prime Minister write home about? They bundled out the Moi regime largely on anti-corruption platform, accusing its leaders of looting public coffers and placing more than half the population under poverty.

Yet, their cronies, too, have been implicated in massive corruption in the past eight years, ranking the country among the top worst nations in Transparency International Corruption Index. Their commitment to fighting grand corruption has at best remained hollow and rhetorical. Their ‘foot soldiers’ ganged up to mutilate the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Bill last week, effectively shutting down the Integrity Centre.

And now, the Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister Mutula Kilonzo claims that the law is not only inherently retrogressive, but creates an enabling environment for corrupt investors. Although he midwifed the bad law to a large extent, he sounded apologetic that the mutilation went far beyond the intention to eliminate the KACC director.

How ridiculous! He sat in the Cabinet and the House where the decision to clip the institution’s wings was hatched but he did not cry foul then. But we must not be duped that the MPs’ rage was about PLO Lumumba, nor was it triggered by his altercation with MP Cecily Mbarire.

He may have incurred their wrath by proclaiming 90 per cent of the Cabinet was corrupt and placing dozens of State corporation executives under surveillance. He may have flirted around with Western envoys and corporate executives who routinely chided the Executive for its lethargy in the fight against corruption.

However, the focus of their attention was the institution itself that has raffled their feathers. They simply wanted it out to shake-off ongoing investigations. Well, they may have succeeded.

In 2009, South Africa’s ANC similarly disbanded their anti-corruption agency, Scorpion, because it investigated Jacob Zuma and his NEC members before he took office.

Recently, the court overturned a section of the law that disbanded it as constitutionally invalid and termed the police unit that replaced it ‘insufficiently insulated from political influence’. In Nigeria, MPs tampered with the law to truncate the war against corruption that they felt targeted them.

With only four convictions in a decade, their anti-corruption unit is now viewed as incompetent amid claims of internal graft allegations and political interference.

With the top management out of the way, the remaining staff at KACC are apprehensive they may be booted out in the vetting. Already, the suspects under investigation who are aware the new law makes the staff vulnerable have threatened some.

Corruption is a human rights issue. The silence by the civil society and the media on this affront to the independence of KACC is unacceptable. The new AG must tell the Government the new law stinks and should be scrapped. Further delay will wind the clock back decades and ‘corruption zone’ billboards may soon crop up everywhere.

The writer is a former MP for Mandera Central and political economist