HakiPensheni

Opinion and Analysis

Former United Nations Habitat executive director, Anna Tibaijuka, who went on to become a cabinet minister in Tanzania. PHOTO | FILE  NATION MEDIA GROUP

By Business Daily

The verdict is finally out on the bribery scandal involving executives of a UK printing firm and Kenyan electoral and examination officials.

Two senior Smith and Ouzman officials were found guilty of bribing senior officials from the former Interim Independent Electoral Commission (now Independent Electoral and Boundaries
Commission), the Kenya National Examinations Council and the Kenya Bureau of Standards. They will be sentenced in February. 

This development puts to test our integrity as a country because corruption is a two-way traffic and the Kenyan public officers involved in the scam are technically guilty of a vice.

Although the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) has announced it will use the evidence adduced in the UK court to charge the Kenyan officials, we still believe that they should not wait for the investigations to commence and must step aside.

Kenyan officials are notorious for not resigning when mentioned adversely in corruption scandals and instead dig in until pushed aside or hoping the public will forget about the matter.

Our enforcement mechanisms in major corruption scandals have also been wanting and the EACC has mostly focused on small fish while failing to nail the major culprits.

Targeting traffic police officers receiving bribes from motorists and having the footage shown on television cannot eradicate corruption. EACC must go beyond cosmetic appearances on television or newspapers and crack down on the menace. What Kenyans want to see is action not lame actions. We are yet to see senior corrupt officials prosecuted and convicted.

We also need to borrow lessons from what is currently happening in Tanzania where the attorney-general resigned and a cabinet minister was sacked over a graft scandal.

The recently released national corruption perception survey revealed a very worrying trend in Kenya. It found that the war on corruption is yet to be won and that we have a long way to go.

According to the survey, professionals such as lawyers, medical practitioners and land surveyors top the list of dishonest professionals. The survey found that a third of Kenyans have a very low opinion of these professions and view them as the most corrupt in the society.

For example, doctors and nurses were perceived to engage in corruption by 26.30 per cent of the respondents.

According to EACC, which commissioned the survey, 35 per cent of the respondents had sought medical services at private or public health institutions over the past one year and encountered corruption.

What is more worrying is that the survey reveals that the corruption menace is on the increase. This is despite many campaigns and millions of shillings being spent in a bid to eradicate the problem.