When will Kenyans say enough is enough to the Pestilence of Corruption?

By Patrick Ochieng *

Despite the uneasiness which has lurked at the backdrop of the struggle between the Office of the Prime Minister and that of the President, today the Coalition Government, in general, lacks affirmative and widespread social approval, is insecure, and has increasingly become an arena for politicians to score political points. Even to a casual observer, it is clear that the Coalition Government has lost much of its ballast, and represents a pale copy of the immediate post – election Anan led settlement outfit. The reason for this is simple, the leadership of the Coalition is mired in official corruption. As a firmly fixed cog in the corruption machine the President has with the finality befitting a hangman made it plain by his recent action that corruption is the chosen way of doing business. By vetoing the PM’s decision to suspend Ministers Sam Ongeri and William Ruto the President has endorsed our road to ruin and placed a bandage on cancer that is the bloated tumour of corruption. Verily, verily, verily, Kenya is now on top of the charts, very much within the brackets of countries that want to always show all and sundry that something is being done about corruption while they know it is mere bluffing.

I have not read a recent copy of Guinness Book of Records but I feel that it is near impossible to miss the inclusion of Kenya for the ingenuity of some of its citizens and allies in milking the country’s economy dry; if there is no such entry, then it will be a veritable sin of omission! The pervasiveness and the great depths of corruption in our beloved country have been as a result of what can best be referred to as “collective suicide”. It is not enough to say that corruption has been there for time immemorial; that is not an argument, and is the best exemplification of woolly thinking. Similarly, it is a militation against rigorous thinking to seem to be condoning the inability of the government to stamp out corruption by saying that “in any event, there are two parties to a corrupt deal”. We have institutionalized corruption in this country for a number of reasons - the leading of which are greed and moral decay. But the bottom line is really the lack of political will to eradicate corruption. There are other reasons, - these include mismanagement of publicly-owned resources as well as the economy generally, thus exacerbating the incidence of corruption.

Some years back - in fact in the late 80s, I came across a 1960s sociological study on Peru. Two things still remain etched in my mind. First, the study stated, as a finding, that if a rich businessman (or his corporation) paid taxes to the government, that is taxes payable in relation to the level of profitability, then all his colleagues/peers would think of him a fit candidate for a mental asylum. Second, if there was a traffic accident, the drivers of the motor vehicles involved thereof sorted out the matter with their fists. Peru must have since then taken some steps to come out from that state of anarchy. In Kenya we seem to be going through what Peru went through in the 60s. Our greatest problem, like is the case in many a poor nation in the so-called Third World, is that the state continues to be a major source of private wealth. This, to a great extent, explains the extremely degrading level of sycophancy at various levels of leadership in the public sphere. Similarly, corruption is rife in undemocratic regimes where the state machinery facilitates its clogging of the political, economic and social veins. Disclosure of its extent is treated as seditious, and silence is taken as golden in the circumstances. The following words, uttered by the famous Burmese freedom - fighter, Aung San Suu Kyi, are apt here. They are from “Freedom from Fear”:

“... It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge to it ... with so close relationships between fear and corruption. It is little wonder that in any society where fear is rife corruption in all forms becomes deeply entrenched”.

In this country, people started talking seriously, that is, after the high ¬- watermark of repression in the 1980s, about corruption, during the proceedings of the Judicial Commission appointed to look into the circumstances under which the late Foreign Minister Dr Robert Ouko was murdered. For the first time, important public figures went public that they were not corrupt at all and that they were as clean as cotton. It was truly, as the late Hungarian writer, Arthur Koestler, would have agreed, “darkness at noon” - something very much out of place, like the sun rising from the west. But it was also a healthy thing within the milieu of our political hygiene. The mere fact that Kenyans had for the first time agreed that there was corruption in the country was in itself the first step towards dealing with the vice. The other point, seemingly simplistic but of a cathartic effect, was the start of the understanding that corruption is a pestilence, a plague-indeed, a very corrosive agent of development, the sure passport to poverty. Today we are on the edge of a bottomless pit and it seems to me this situation will persist if we do not slough off the culture of fear which has brought us where we are. The fiasco between Kibaki and Raila with regard to the suspension of two Ministers named in corruption scandals is symptomatic of the tattered state of political governance that we find ourselves in. Integrity amongst our leaders has reached such a nadir that it is not surprising at all when a leader - in all seriousness - says that he fiddled with public funds to increase funding to his tribesmen. Leadership has descended to such low heights, some leaders would be better off selling charcoal or running a butchery somewhere. Corruption is a manifestation of bad governance. The bringing to an end of bad governance in a democratic society is clearly one way of fighting corruption on the postulation that corruption can only be effectively curbed if its root causes are established. That’s why I think the spat between the PM and the President should not relegate the drive to have a new constitution as I fear it may won’t to.

Raila Odinga the PM a rightist conservative to his fingertips, a point often lost sight of by the PNU establishment, which hate his guts, cannot be said to have overstepped his mandate by asking the two Ministers to step aside. Neither does his action to suspend them for three months make him a fire eating revolutionary as many commentators have wanted to make us believe. When one does not kowtow to the executive so as to get a clean bill of political correctness imperial presidents get really angry. With the many rip offs that Kibaki’s tenure has facilitated Kenyans should have come to the streets years back with one clear message: “Enough is enough.” Under Kibaki’s watch state finances and resources have been frittered away - left, right and centre - and all for the benefit of the politically correct, their minions and public officials who owe their jobs not because of merit but because they have a powerful godfathers somewhere.

This excessive bleeding of state resources must be staunchest if one looks at what has taken place with FPE funds, the Triton Oil saga, Anglo Leasing etc and really Kenyans have to do something fast-indeed, now. How, crying aloud, does one make of a leader who declares publicly that he is not going anywhere - that is, he is not going to step aside wapende wasipende. Again, and this is in respect of the curbing of the incidence of corruption, Ministers must give a good example to those under them. Corruption is weighing down the people of Kenya in the manner of a milestone tied round one’s neck because the top leadership has no regard whatsoever for notions of rectitude, probity and political morality. Here the nuggets of wisdom in Arthur M. Schlesinger’s preface to Dennis Wepman’s book on Kenyatta are apt here:

“Democracy does not eliminate emotion from politics; sometimes it fosters demagogy; but is confident that, as the greatest of democratic leaders put it, you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. It measures leadership by results and retire those who overreach or falter or fail.”

What we need to entrench is a tradition of liberal democracy, electoral competition among different parties for political power and training social movements and other institutions of civil society are all factors that make a powerful contribution to the continuous priority given to universal and free provision of key social services and economic benefits. Let me quote Aung San Kuu Kyi’s voice of hope. Insecurity is the root psychology of authoritarian regimes – a mistrust of one’s dignity, one’s self-worth, and therefore a mistrust of others. Let her speak:

“I think power comes from within. If you have confidence in what you are doing and you are shored up by the belief that what you are doing is right, that in itself constitutes power, and this power is very important when you are trying to achieve something. If you don’t believe in what you are doing, your actions will lack credibility. However hard you try, circumstances will appear.”

Indeed, the very essence of governance is that people are no longer content to be “managed” like commodities or pieces of industrial plant. Mr. President and the Rt. Hon Prime Minister, please take note.

* Patrick Ochieng is the Executive Director of Ujamaa Center.