Summary
- It was inevitable that our long standing “bad spending” hydra would infest and infect Kenya’s difficult Covid-19 moment.
- As a colleague mused on a WhatsApp group of public policy professionals of which I am a member, “these are no longer predictions we make and take credit for having great wisdom…it’s expectation…(and indeed) the low probability prediction (would be) if everything was done right”.
It was inevitable that our long standing “bad spending” hydra
would infest and infect Kenya’s difficult Covid-19 moment. As a
colleague mused on a WhatsApp group of public policy professionals of
which I am a member, “these are no longer predictions we make and take
credit for having great wisdom…it’s expectation…(and indeed) the low
probability prediction (would be) if everything was done right”.
On
Monday August 31, in a virtual conference on “County Governments’
Resilience in the Covid-19 Era” hosted by the Council of Governors,
President Uhuru Kenyatta directed the Ministry of Health to create a
digital platform system that publicises Covid-19 procurement details
including tender values, evaluation and bid awardees given current heat
and light over all that is happening at the Kenya Medical Supplies
Agency (Kemsa). Using a real Gregorian calendar, we’ll have this
platform by October 1.
One of the conference’s 15
resolutions is a promise to “strengthen accountability and actively
fight corruption” in two ways. First, through the aforementioned open
government portal to publicise tenders on both national and county
government websites. Second, through improved coordination of oversight
in Parliament (between National Assembly and Senate) and investigations
across anti-corruption agencies). None of the resolutions from this
“meet-up” have an active deadline.
Is our war on graft
and waste headed anywhere? Let’s broadly review this #Covidmillionaires
moment - as the emerging scandal around pricey or non-functional Kemsa
procurement is now titled.
Beginning with the
President’s previous orders and announcements. Two years ago, public
agencies were directed to make their monthly procurement transactions
open and transparent through reporting every 15th day of the following
month. The directive, like many others, has been ignored in the main.
Further, the directive cleverly excluded “works or services in
essential utilities, procurement arising from the declaration of a
national emergency or national disaster, and procurement of a classified
nature as prescribed by law and low value threshold procurement”. Does
essential utilities equal services, hence Ministry of Health? Isn’t
Covid-19 a national emergency? PR announcement this time around, or
what?
A week ago, the President interestingly directed
investigating agencies to complete Covid-19 investigations within 21
days, by September 16. These are agencies that are supposed to work
independently, under nobody’s direction or control. In any event, these
investigations should be done before we expect pubs to reopen and sports
to restart at the next curfew review on September 25.
Question One. Is this yet another “mnataka nifanye nini?” (what do you want me to do?) PR moment?
Coordination
is where the real nightmare begins. Sample the following. The Ethics
and Anti-Corruption Commission(EACC) began investigations around June,
and was reported in the press in July announcing a “massive scandal that
will shock the nation”. Then we watched #Covidmillionaires on TV. And
Parliament swung into action.
In the Senate, an ad-hoc
committee on Covid-19 - who began with interesting legal and
institutional proposals for pandemic management in the long-term -
demanded financial reports from the Controller of Budget (which we are
reading about) and a forensic audit from the Auditor-General by
September 4. Somehow, the committee on health joined in, and we now have
a joint committee examining national and county expenditure. Some
suggest the Senate should stick to its core county business.
In
the National Assembly, the committee on health is busy interrogating
Ministry of Health and Kemsa big wigs, while the Public Accounts
Committee (PAC) separately wants its own forensic audit from the
Auditor-General by October 25. Meanwhile, the Public Investments
Committee insists on jurisdictional oversight over Kemsa; and PAC
sticking to the parent Ministry (of which Kemsa is a big part).
Question Two: Is parliament’s “Covid-19 fog of inquiry” deliberately clouding our war on graft?
Let’s
continue. We don’t know what the Directorate of Criminal Investigations
(DCI) is up to in this case. We haven’t heard from the Internal
Auditor-General or the Ministry of Health’s Internal Audit unit. Oh, and
where’s the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority and the Inspector
of State Corporations? Does the once-dreaded Efficiency Monitoring Unit
still exist?
Multi-agency, you say? Ok, let’s wait for
the Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and the Asset Recovery
Agency to join the party at some stage. And I thought our National
Intelligence Service was supposed to “review all cartels, especially
those in the public system of budgeting, procurement, regulation and
illegal rigging of markets….(for the) DCI then DPP to confront” as the
President directed in his 2020 New Year address to Kenyans.
Question Three: Is Covid-19 the untiring camel of graft that’s breaking Kenya’s multi-agency back?
Finally,
like all high crime and murder, our attention has quickly shifted to
the tedious and the tangential. Here’s the point. Technically, if Kenya
was really committed to running a truly “results for people”-inspired
public finance management (PFM) system
(policy-planning-budgeting-implementation (including
procurement)-reporting-accountability) that worked in normal and
emergency times, our apparently politically-correct #Covidmillionaires
wouldn’t be so massively box-office.
Without working
PFM, and between directives, dates, diversion and drama, this movie
seems over. The next one’s probably already cast, and in production. As
they say, “Coming soon to a screen near you(?)
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