What role will an emasculated AG really play in the brave new Kenya?

Recently when I needed to look up the number of outgoing Attorney-General Amos Wako, I reached for the trusty old Telkom Kenya telephone directory.

It took a bit of digging to discover that the entire edifice had been reduced to a minor entry under that mouthful of a ministry of Justice, National Cohesion and Constitutional Affairs.

Actually office of Attorney-General does not even rate a heading as a department, being swallowed up under the State Law Office where the cabinet-level holder shares equal billing with subordinates such as the Solicitor-General and the Registrar-General.

In the telephone book, the A-G ranks lower than other officers who are at least head their own departments, such as the Registrar of Marriages!

The same 2010 directory reveals a very stealthy sleight of hand by which the Judiciary is now also listed as a mere department of the Justice Ministry. It previously came its own heading as an independent arm.

Presuming the directory publishers do not make their own chart of government organisation, l can only presume that somebody sought to demonstrate the real place of the Judiciary in the current regime by relegating it to a mere department under Mr Mutula Kilonzo’s Justice ministry.

Anyway, that demotion of the Judiciary, now with a new Chief Justice, is a story for another day.

The story today is of the office that was neutered even before passage of the new Constitution and the diminished status that Prof Githu Muigai inherits from Mr Amos Wako.

Mr Muigai took office promising to follow-through on stalled cases of grand corruption —I suppose that meant Goldenberg and Anglo-Leasing — but it seems to have escaped his mind under the new dispensation, prosecution is not in his docket.

The office of the Director of Public Prosecution is now an independent office headed by Mr Keriako Tobiko, who successfully succeeded himself from the old department in the A-G’s chambers without having answered why there was such an allergy to prosecuting and jailing the big-time thieves, warlords, drug peddlers, rapists and other criminals with connections in high places.

I don’t suppose Mr Tobiko will be transformed to work on what he neglected while under the A-G, so the Lords of Impunity will continue their reign.

And the thing is that however strongly he may feel a need for action, Mr Muigai will be helpless because the prosecutor is not answerable to him.

As Mr Wako descended the steps at Sheria House on Monday and got into his car marking the end of a record tenure, he probably still had the din ringing in his ears.

Throughout his long tenure as A-G, Mr Amos Wako had to smile through plenty of opprobrium over his blatant refusal to take action on the kleptomaniacs that ran the country.

He could easily blame the police, and in later years the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission, for shoddy investigations and weak evidence that could never secure convictions.

But the buck stopped with him, at least until the time he surrendered the prosecutions docket, so one thing Mr Wako will never escape is the accusation that he was soft on mega-criminals.

That is a problem that his successor will not inherit, but still many will be watching to see how Mr Muigai defines an office he takes considerably castrated.

The personality often defines the office. We had Mr Charles Njonjo dominating the landscape like an anglophile tyrant. His hand-picked successor James Karugu brought a breath of fresh air but quickly came to grief when he turned on his mentor.

Thereafter Mr Njonjo decided to punish Kenyans with the pompous James Kamere, who messed up big time and paved way for President Moi to condemn us to disaster in the form of Justice Mathew Guy Muli.

Weighed against those two predecessor, Mr Shitswila Amos Wako was a rip-roaring success. While he is often measured by his failure to jail big criminals, he at least deserves credit for bringing back some sanity; and deftly navigating troublesome waters at periods of great upheaval.

When he belatedly trumpets his role as a quiet reformer within a reactionary system, I tend to agree.

mgaitho@ke.nationmedia.com