The Kenya We Want

Snouts in the Trough

The Fellowship of the Wringer

After declaring he had rather die than resign, then "stepping aside" to allow for independent investigations which reportedly found him culpable for misleading parliament andselling the Grand Regency hotel with undue haste and secrecy, Amos Kimunya is back in Mwai Kibaki's promised "Clean Cabinet". 

He joins a distinguished group of presidential cronies who have been, despite all evidence to the contrary, "cleared of wrongdoing" (at least in the President's fevered imagination). The Fellowship of the Wringer. It includes persons such as George Saitoti, Fred Gumo, David Mwiraria and Kiraitu Murungi, who after being caught with their hands in the public till, are forced to resign (OK, OK Amos, step aside), subjected to Commissions of Inquiry whose reports and recommendations are neither released nor implemented and after a short stint in the backbenches to allow for public tempers to cool down, are reappointed to the Cabinet. 

The oldest members of this fellowship are Saitoti and Gumo, who even prior to Kibaki taking power had been included in a "List of Shame" in a report into the Goldenberg scandal by the Parliamentary Select Committee on Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes (popularly known as the Kombo report).  That report recommended that they both "be investigated with a view to prosecution" and candidate Kibaki promised to implement in full the recommendations. However, one of the first acts of Kibaki's Presidency was to appoint the two to his Cabinet! A subsequent Commission of Inquiry into Goldenberg also recommended that Saitoti be prosecuted. However, he managed to convince a constitutional court that he had been "cleared" by his fellow MPs. Attorney-General Amos Wako vowed to appeal that particular constitutional court ruling though an appeal that is yet to materialise several years later. 

And when it comes to being cleared by Paliament, Mwiraria's name was expunged from the Parliamentary Accounts Committee report into the Anglo-Leasing scandal, largely at the instigation of that other anti-corruption crusader, Justice Minister Martha Karua (who in an interview with the BBC's Hardtalk two years ago said that she could offer no evidence that the war on corruption was being won and admitted that after more than 4 years in power,the Kibaki administration could not produce a single corruption conviction of note). During the vote, the August House was less than a quarter full, and the motion was passed by a majority of 3 with Mwiraria himself casting one of those votes in his own favour! A thunderous vindication indeed!

President Kibaki has shown a propensity for disregarding the recommendations of the people he appoints to investigate corruption when their reports threaten to disturb hios otherwise peaceful slumber. He was AWOL when his own anti-corruption czar, John Githongo, was asked to "ngo srowry" in his investigations into Anglo-Leasing and eventually hounded out of the country, his evidence dismissed on the spurious assertion that it did not matter because he was not an "investigator".  The Kroll report into the looting of Kenya under Moi was kept under wraps for over 3 years and has not been acted upon till today. Similarly, Kibaki has now ignored the recomendations of the Cockar Report which he himself commissioned. 

Thus we conduct the War on Corruption.

Licence to Steal?

The NARC government's war on corruption once again looks like a whitewash. Just a day before the KACC urged the prosecution of 12 suspects, Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister Martha Karua offered a deal to all those implicated: return the money and face no consequences. She says that this is to promote national reconciliation.

Why, I ask, do we need to be reconciled with criminals? Is this not the same argument that Kiraitu Murungi employed when he declared Anglo-Leasing "the scandal that never was" since the cash had been returned? In fact, Karua's offer underscores the unwillingness of the government to make any meaningful attempt to punish those who have systematically pillaged and plundered Kenya's economy.

Most have gotten away scot-free (such as former president Moi, his cronies and his family, especially his son Gideon -remember the missing CID files?) and the few who have been nabbed have been treated with kid gloves. Just look at what happened to Ketan Somaia, Khamlesh Pattni and Margaret Gachara. A short time behind bars (most of which was spent in hospital private wards), no confiscation of assets and in Gachara's case, a Presidential pardon. Where is the deterrent value in that? I would gladly spend two years in prison if it meant that I could keep Kshs. 24 million. No wonder corruption continues unabated!