Corruption is a threat to the war on corruption. The situation is anarchic. A most wanted terrorist can drive from Nairobi to Mombasa, and board a boat to southern Somalia without shooting his way into the al Shabaab territory. All a thug needs is a briefcase of bank notes in the Sh1,000 denomination, wrapped in Sh50,000 bundles. A wave of a wad of notes may open the way for the most wanted criminal. It is an age when money opens doors for criminals.
It is not only police – the maligned petty cash takers – who are waving suspects, “Safe journey, Sir!” The admission of anarchy, which has sucked in most public watchdogs, came from X President Uhuru Kenyatta made a similar admission, of Kenya being a land of thieves, while in Israel last week.
Corruption is vicious and digital thanks to revolving doors at Integrity Centre, the duplicity at the Directorate of Public Prosecutions, an embedded judiciary, ineffective public watchdog commissions and complicity of investigative agencies.
No matter how tough the new Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission chairman Philip Kinisu talks, he knows he is walking a beaten path. None of the former occupiers of the hot seat beats PLO Lumumba in tough talk. Lumumba had tougher adjectives for potential victims of the accountability police.
Kinisu should remember a former chairman of the defunct Kenya Anti-Corruption Authority, Harun Mwau, a sharp-shooter – literally. But the award-winning former policeman and Olympic medalist could not hit the target. The boss hit a dead-end when he tried to arrest the sacred cows of the Moi era.
Mwau learnt he did not have a blank cheque. His Shakespeare-quoting successor Aaron Ringera came in a second time during the President Kibaki era, with an appetising salary of about Sh2 million. But he left office with nothing to show for it.
Civil society guru John Githongo understands corruption networks better. He understood, like Mutunga, that corruption is the totem pole around which mendacious politicians orbit.
Lumumba promised to escalate the war on corruption without fear or favour. But the fearless czar lost the plot when he dangled the knife in front of his potential victims. Lumumba’s fall was not due to the ‘sensitive’ files he was handling. The watchdog had intended to invade sacred ground after sorting out corrupt ministers.
The public watchdog was about to sniff around the Constituency Development Fund, renamed the National Government Constituency Development Fund. CDF, which was until February 19 under the control of MPs, receives 2.5 per cent of public revenue for financing basic services at the constituencies.
MPigs and other public watchdogs have their snouts deep in the trough. The National CDF Board can do nothing about the plunder because it fears the backlash from MPigs. But the CJ and the President are not saying what should be done to reclaim probity in public office.
The CJ says bandits have taken over state agencies mandated to fight corruption. Suspects hold the system to ransom. They plunder public coffers, knowing allegations of corruption disappear when they unleash money to subvert justice. The trending view is that corruption suspects are considered “guilty until they are proved rich”.
An Akan metaphor, of a person who steals your tomatoes at night and then sells them back to you for a deal during the day captures the stalemate. Politicians and tenderpreneurs are the lords of corruption that enriches a few while impoverishing the majority.
Rapacious deals at the counties are undermining the gains of devolution. Plunder of public resources at the constituencies is eating into billions of shillings that should finance basic services for the poor. Ward funds are being diverted into individual pockets. Wannabe politicians are eyeing the public trough against voracious incumbents. The trending view is you steal from where you work. It is a crisis of integrity.
Mutunga captured these compromises in a January interview with a Dutch newspaper, NRC Handelsblad, when he said: “You are taking these people into a corrupt investigating system, through a corrupt anti-corruption system, and a corrupt judiciary.”
“The deal we have is based on commission. Guys are saying: we just had expensive elections where we spent Sh10 billion. We have to get it from somewhere. Or we have to think about the election in 2017. We need a war chest. So you have all that stealing. We have become a bandit economy.”
The writer, a communications consultant, is also a university lecturer.