Corruption cloud hangs over MP watchdog team

Parliamentary committees are facing serious allegations that members are corruptly using their watchdog function to enrich themselves.

Suspicions of corruption have particularly derailed the work of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chaired by ODM Secretary-General Ababu Namwamba.

The committee investigates how government institutions and various parastatals spend public funds.

When they gathered at their usual meeting room at Parliament Buildings last Thursday, PAC members had hoped that the disharmony in their team would be resolved amicably.

However, disagreements among members and their unsuccessful attempt to kick out Mr Namwamba as chairman escalated after information about the infighting leaked out.

The team had been so careful to keep their business secret that during an earlier meeting on Tuesday, the clerks who form the committee’s secretariat had been asked to excuse the MPs.

“Our last meeting aborted and members parted ways acrimoniously,” a member of the committee would later say.

“We don’t know when the next meeting will be held but I have heard that signatures are being collected (to oust Mr Namwamba),” he added.

Members of the committee, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue and House rules, claimed that some of their colleagues were involved in bribery, coercion and improper contact with some of the individuals being investigated by the committee.

There have even been claims that some members became concerned after hearing allegations that their colleagues collected bribes on their behalf but failed to deliver the money.

If such claims are finally substantiated, the major concern to the public would be that MPs were not worried that their colleagues accepted bribes, but that they did not share them.

 Mr Namwamba has accused some of his colleagues on the team of being agents of those who do not want to be exposed.

A day before the Thursday meeting, Speaker Justin Muturi had attempted to intervene but was informed that the issue would be resolved internally.

“The problems we are having at the PAC now clearly explain why we have not had any substantive input from Parliament by way of oversight,” said Mr Samuel Kimeu, the executive director of Transparency International.

“There are too many allegations of corruption, some of them credible, and they find their way into Parliament, they are investigated but when politics and corruption come into play, nothing comes of the report,” he said, lamenting that corruption has made Parliament toothless.

WAR AGAINST THE PARTY

On Monday, the Cord leadership called for and then cancelled a parliamentary group meeting with the agenda, according to a text message sent to MPs being “the war being waged against the party in PAC”.

“(I) am faced by a classical case of the vampire of corruption fighting back viciously. Please come to our coalition PG tomorrow 9am at Orange House and help me confront this impunity,” Mr Namwamba had said in the message to his party colleagues.

However, that meeting was called off an hour later, with Minority Whip Thomas Mwadeghu saying it had been postponed.
A party official told the Daily Nation afterwards there was an internal disagreement over the matter.

Members of PAC are tomorrow scheduled to vote on a Motion of no confidence against Mr Namwamba.

Former Governance and Ethics Permanent Secretary John Githongo said: “When Parliament’s key oversight committees are perceived as being corruptly compromised, it undermines not only our democracy, but the rule of law.

“It makes a mockery of Parliament’s oversight role, allows the plunder of national resources, betrays the public trust and further undermines the legitimacy of already mistrusted institutions of governance.”

In the corridors of Parliament, allegations are that MPs can be bought for as little as Sh10,000 to vote in a certain way or to sway opinion in committees.
Allegations are also being traded about two committee chairmen who were allegedly bought cars by a State corporation suspected to have lost billions of shillings in fake development deals. The claims are unsubstantiated but they point to the air of suspicion in the House.

This suspicion of “rent-seeking” has persisted, despite concerns by the House leadership from as far back as March last year, when Deputy Minority Leader Jakoyo Midiwo said: “I spoke here last week about the issue of rent-seeking because it is out there.”

In a commentary at the end of 2014, the Speaker wrote of his worries that committee work was being used “as a rent-seeking avenue by ravenous leaders”.

“You get indications that something is amiss when a committee is designated or seizes a matter, conducts investigations but takes ages to report back to the House,” he wrote.

Mr Kimeu said that while the allegations have been made over and over again, “there seems to be very little resolve to deal with that challenge on integrity issues”.

Integrity and the corruption allegations are likely to be on the agenda when the House leadership — Speaker Muturi, the Majority and Minority Leaders and the committee chairmen — heads to Mombasa at the end of this week for a retreat.

INTEGRITY

Mr Muturi last year asked the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission to advise the Parliamentary Service Commission on an integrity framework for MPs, with focus starting from MPs’ fraudulent mileage claims.

“Parliament has a serious problem of integrity but the Speaker and the leadership of Parliament have a responsibility to protect the integrity of Parliament... It’s a sorry state that we are in but I don’t think we can afford to lose Parliament,” said Mr Kimeu.

Mr Githongo recommended more drastic action.

“The Speaker should quit if these allegations are coming in so thick and fast and he’s doing nothing about it.”

Minority Leader Francis Nyenze disagreed that Parliament has an integrity problem.

“I think some of these are speculation. If anybody has information about committees, or has given money, let them come forth,” he said. According to him, corruption fights back.