It is ‘come let us eat together’ as the stampede to 2012 elections starts

With the countdown beating so rapidly towards the 2012 elections, it is not surprising that our peculiar breed of leaders should shove aside critical matters on the national agenda to plunge headlong into the scramble for political office.

Not drought, famine, pestilence, economic collapse, war, invasion, or anything else will distract our selfish leaders from the mad scramble to secure personal glory and privilege.

The tragedy is that they could trample underfoot the entire reform programme. It will also open the floodgates to unchecked corruption.

Those in positions of power and authority have traditionally exploited the electoral cycle to loot the public purse and line their own pockets under the guise of raising campaign funds.

That is why I fear the theft being exposed on the free primary education programme or the arid lands project could be just the tip of the iceberg.

The sums being mentioned so far are pocket change to the high and mighty who execute such scams as the Goldenberg scandal of the Moi State House or the Anglo Leasing scandal that was happily inherited by the Kibaki crowd.  

If anecdotal evidence is anything to go by, the wheeler dealers and robber barons from the Moi regime who seamlessly transited to the Kibaki State House are getting into full throttle.

They may have lain low for a while, especially with the Anglo Leasing revelations, but they are strutting around now with confidence that indicates endorsement from both sides of the coalition divide.

With the shotgun marriage that forced President Kibaki and Prime Minister Odinga into a forced coalition, I expressed hope in this very column that the phrase “come, let us reason together”, would not be subverted to “come, let us eat together”.

Indeed, it seemed for a while that the nature of the coalition government — two hostile forces sharing the table — presented natural checks and balances.

It actually worked for a while, but now it seems there is little alarm on corruption being raised from within the government.

Perhaps instead of striving to occupy the moral high ground by exposing their rivals as thieves, the two sides are now competing in thievery.

And that is the dilemma we face for come the elections, we will be presented with a ballot paper that is a gallery of rogues.

Look at President Kibaki as he exits the stage and all the contenders to take over his mantle — Prime Minister Odinga, Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka, Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, suspended Cabinet minister William Ruto, Deputy Prime Minister Musalia Mudavadi, former Justice minister Martha Karua, assistant minister Peter Kenneth, MP Mutava Musyimi, plus the rest of the large supporting cast.

Which of them can look you in the eye and swear that he (or she) has never stolen a penny? Which one of the lot can persuade you that he has never directly or indirectly benefited from corruption and misrule?

Which of the candidates has never associated with the barons of corruption and plunder? Which one of them has never trampled on gullible wananchi to get ahead politically and financially?

Which one can say he has never misused office to employ unqualified cronies and relatives? Which one of the lot has not exploited ethnicity for personal advancement?

If any one of them can satisfactorily answer those questions, he or she will have my vote. But first I fear that the country may have been bled dry by the time ballot papers are printed.

The corridors of power are teeming with briefcase merchants who seem to have the keys to the traditional sources of loot in the Ministry of Defence and other security procurement, the Treasury, the Office of the President, infrastructural development, health, education, agriculture, telecommunications, and of course the energy behemoth, where the scandals uncovered so far may pale in comparison to the nuclear explosion about to be unleashed.

The forces of impunity are in full swing because they have seen that there is nothing to fear. One year into office, Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission boss PLO Lumumba has achieved nothing other than spout sweet poetry.

And of course the police and the Public Prosecutor long ago surrendered the fight against high-level graft. Perhaps we should just outsource the anti-corruption effort to some little rock near England known mostly for its Jersey cows.

mgaitho@ke.natiomedia.com