Battle against corruption takes back seat as 2013 draws to a close

Civil rights activists led by Timothy Njoya (left) and Davinder Lamba (right) during a protest against MPs for attempting to award themselves hefty send-off perks in January. FILE 

By DOROTHY KWEYU, dkweyu@ke.nationmedia.com

In Summary

• Vested political interests hold top leaders to ransom, stalling bid to boost prudent use of public resources.

The year 2013 is drawing to a close on a pretty murky note in the all-important matter of probity in the public service.

Throughout the year, corruption has dominated public discourse for all the wrong reasons, permeating as it has done the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary.

Claims of grand corruption assumed a deafening crescendo on Saturday when 34-year-old Nandi Hills MP Alfred Keter repeated his recent sensational claims that the Sh1.2 trillion standard gauge rail project President Kenyatta launched on November 28, was not only three times overpriced but the tender award was also irregular.

Mr Keter has been accused of canvassing for Kalenjin businesspeople, who missed a piece of the highly lucrative cake.

However, the fact that he stuck his neck out on a matter that has generated loud murmurs brings to a climax a year that could well pass for the most corrupt in Kenya’s 50-year history.

In recent months, the Business Daily has talked to anti-corruption crusaders on the genesis of the cancer that is graft in Kenya in the belief that it is only by tracing its roots that there can be any hope of eradicating it.

In an interview with retired Justice Lee Muthoga, he said: “The functional capacity of the public service is seriously influenced by the corruptive capacity of the system to an extent that, if we could only eliminate or reduce or even bring to understandable levels our corruption, we would increase the utility of our budgets by at least 30 per cent.”

Speaking on the sidelines of the Nairobi Ecumenical Group (NEG) Roundtable on October 26, under the theme: Rising Inequality in Kenya: Can Churches Working Together Make a Difference? the judge said: “There’s no one who says it doesn’t exist. There’s no one who says he would not want to fight it. It is not a question of lack of saying; it is lack of doing.”

He posed: “What is being done about it at all levels?—because corruption cannot be eradicated at one level.”

Environmentalist G. Wakuraya Wanjohi, who led the discussion had given one of the objectives of the NEG as having a “common concern about the many social and ethical problems facing Kenya society: we will be more effective if we work together on the solution of the problems”—hence the interview with Mr Justice Muthoga.

In apparent affirmation Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”, the former official (2003-2012) of the Trial Chamber II of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania, tracked the historical roots of Kenya’s corruption to 1966.

After the formation of the Kenya People’s Union by then Vice-President Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, President Jomo Kenyatta “called a rally to denigrate (former freedom fighter Bildad) Kaggia for having done nothing for himself,” recalls Mr Justice Muthoga, now a principal consultant at Intellectual Resources Centre (IRC).

“Kenyatta went for Kaggia and said, ‘I made him assistant minister; what did he do? I made him this, what did he do for himself? Look at him; he has nothing. He has been in government; I gave him positions in government, he got nothing for himself’.

It is from there that the psyche of public service began changing. People began to understand that public service was for self-development, not for public development,” he noted.

The judge — an advocate of the High Court of Kenya — stated that the Ndegwa Commission debate on whether public servants should participate in business, and the Sessional Paper that allowed public servants to participate in business, removing all requirements of declaring one’s interest when the situation so demanded “opened the doors for grand corruption”.