Renewed anti-graft crusade a carbon copy of earlier State mission

• Talk of taming corruption with little action from the top doesn’t add up

Last Friday’s meeting of senior government officials provided yet another forum for the high and mighty to moan about corruption, and they did it so well against the backdrop of beautiful speeches delivered by the two men in whose hands Kenya’s destiny lies, President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

The speeches were all carbon copies of those made some time back at the Kenya School of Monetary Studies during a coalition Cabinet bonding session, when the President said all ministers would be required to step aside if caught in any impropriety.

But no heads have rolled yet from high offices. What could have gone wrong? Was all that tough talk a few years ago just idle banter?

The acting director of the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission came very close to providing the answer to this question when he addressed the meeting.

Dr John Mutonyi painted the picture of a Siamese kind of relationship between corruption and politics that makes fighting the vice a Herculean task.

Powerful individuals within the coalition, he said, are responsible for the rising frequency of corrupt tendencies in government, and stopped short of asking the two principals why they hadn’t cracked the whip on the errant lot.

No wonder, then, that as soon Dr Mutonyi rose to speak, the President’s security detail ordered photojournalists to turn off their cameras and unplugged their voice recorders from the console at the back of the room.

Still in office

Dr Mutonyi said there was a huge perception that it will be impossible to eliminate grand corruption, given that most of those accused of perpetrating the vice were still in office.

He said leaders in the current regime had been busy pointing fingers at corrupt practices of the previous (Moi) regime, yet those obstructing justice in the courts were still in government.

“This failure to hold public servants accountable is a result of patronage politics,” Dr Mutonyi said, his remarks coming hot on the heels of rising pressure on Education minister Sam Ongeri and his PS Karega Mutahi to quit following the alleged theft of Sh110 million meant for the widely acclaimed Free Primary Education Programme.

Politicians were largely on the receiving end of Dr Mutonyi’s address, with the anti-graft boss saying their knack for seeking refuge in ‘political and tribal cocoons’ complicated KACC’s work.

“The public is justified in being cynical about the promises we give to fight cormruption,” he said, and gave the example of how a Cabinet minister — who was a civil servant in the Kanu government — twisted evidence against him to subvert justice and forced the National Social Security Fund to purchase a piece of land acquired illegally.

“The officer made a Sh96 million profit on the piece of land without spending any money,” he said.

The land has now been gazetted, Sh96 million of pensioners’ funds lost, yet the culprit is now a minister serving the coalition Cabinet.

Weigh-bridges

Mr Mutonyi also accused those manning the country’s weigh-bridge stations of rampant corruption, saying the points were more of graft centres than highway toll stations.

He said a total of Sh10 million is collected at the weighbridges in bribes daily, a figure that shocked his audience, but added that the laws were “relatively adequate” to “prohibit and address” corruption.

“Many public officers do not regard corruption as a primary responsibility,” he said. “While we believe corruption is a national problem, others do not think so.”

He said a KACC survey found out that the average bribe paid to public servants had risen to Sh3,664, and that the Ministry of Internal Security and Provincial Administration, under the Office of the President, was the most corrupt.

This verdict, Dr Mutonyi said, was arrived at perhaps because the ministry is the “most visible” to the citizens, or perhaps because it is indeed the true picture on the ground.

The Ministry of Local Government came second, that of Medical Services third and Lands fourth. The Ministry of Finance emerged the least corrupt.

Dr Mutonyi also warned that the continued misuse of foreign loans, like was the case with the Sh110 million meant for education, was increasing government debt and that, in the long run, would limit the amount of money available for improving service provision.

He said despite the many laws enacted to guard against corruption, there was little “credible intent” from the ruling class to fight the vice.

He told the principals that some public officers openly flouted rules or exploited weaknesses in existing laws to make that extra buck, and criticised the Parliamentary Select Committee on constitution for deleting the Ethics and Integrity Commission from the draft law.

However, the PSC explained to the Nation that entrenching the commission in the Constitution would have meant that Kenyans will forever be corrupt, and that the fight against graft would have run on to perpetuity.

On the Judiciary, Dr Mutonyi said: “Unless corruption cases are concluded speedily, the sting of deterrence is removed,” and asked the principals to start anew in their resolve to fight corruption.

He proposed a string of measures to wrestle the beast to the ground, among them increasing the risk of engaging in corruption through sanctions.

Chinese walls

He also proposed “Internal Affairs Units” — separate independent investigative units — with autonomy to bring down the “Chinese walls” in government ministries and then, with his eyes on the principals, ended with a satirical quote from a 1997 cartoon in the Daily Nation:

“The government has this morning formed an anti-corruption squad to look into the conduct of the anti-corruption commission, which has been overseeing the anti-corruption taskforce, which was earlier set to investigate the affairs of a government adhoc committee appointed earlier this year to look into the issue of high-level corruption among corrupt government officers.”

The message was as poignant as it was straight to the point, even though when the Head of Civil Service, Mr Francis Muthaura, got his chance at the microphone, he said that that was not the time “for theories”, “new laws” or “new agencies”, but the time to act.