A deeper reflection on Uhuru’s war on graft

Seven-thousand tonnes of substandard fertiliser has been impounded at the Port of Mombasa, part of the consignment of the government’s subsidised fertiliser programme.

It is not known how much substandard fertiliser has made its way to farmers’ fields, but a member of the Parliament’s Agriculture Committee stated that importing substandard fertiliser has become the norm.

Meanwhile, it has emerged that the Jubilee government has been piloting a new Economic Stimulus Programme in response to the declining economic growth. The declining growth is attributed to poor performance of the agricultural sector, which government critics blamed to substandard fertilisers as well as cheap maize and sugar imported by politically connected traders.

The programme, which is implemented by the National Youth Service, involves buying three times the supplies it needs at double the market price. It is intended to stimulate production and improve prices by mopping up the excess low quality commodities in the market.

In other news, an MP from Nyanza has pocketed Sh5 million that he’d been given to distribute to his colleagues, which they in turn were to contribute to a harambee attended by Deputy President William Ruto. The recycling of contributions from one harambee to the next was a Kanu campaign tactic during the Moi era, associated with the YK92 lobby group.

On April 1, 1980, a bus was driven through the fence into the Peruvian embassy in Havana, Cuba. Its five occupants sought political asylum, which was granted. A diplomatic stand-off ensued.
Within days, more than 10,000 people were crammed in the embassy demanding political asylum. President Fidel Castro relented, and announced that any Cuban who wanted to leave the country could, leading to what came to be known as the Mariel Boatlift to the US.

But it turned out that Castro had an ace up his sleeve. He had turned adversity into an opportunity to rid the country of its most dangerous criminals, and the mentally ill. Out of 150,000 immigrants, 25,000 had criminal records.

Miami was hit by a crime wave never seen before or since, which inspired the classic gangster movie Scarface, starring Al Pacino, as Tony Montana, a foul- mouthed sociopathic émigré, who becomes a major drug lord, and a then relatively unknown Michelle Pfeiffer, as his wife Elvira.

Immigration Officer: You ever been to jail, Tony?

Tony Montana: Me? Jail? No way. No.

Immigration Officer: Been in a mental hospital?

Tony Montana: Oh yea. On the boat coming over.

Uhuru and Ruto did not run on a moral-ethical platform. They could not have, for a number of reasons, some of which are best left unsaid. Corruption and patronage were the tools of the trade in Moi’s Kanu where both Uhuru and Ruto cut their political teeth.

Their social backgrounds may be as different as chalk and cheese, but in terms of political morality, there is nothing to choose between them.

Tony Montana: In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, you get the women.

This being the case, the country’s corruption barons and political thugs jumped on their bandwagon. They were not disappointed. For two years, they were given free reign.

The President made noises but did nothing. The plunderers read this to mean that good times were just going to keep rolling and rolling.

Then, out of the blue, he turns up in Parliament brandishing a laundry list. “This is just the beginning of an unwavering war on corruption,” he thunders. Really?

For starters, the President had no troops. He would have known that he was not going to get meaningful support in government. Outside of government, the most important constituencies in the fight against corruption are civil society and the media. His administration has fought these constituencies at every turn.

Second, he chose a prosecutorial strategy. He should have been alive to the fact that he does not control the institutions responsible for that strategy.

The clumsy manner in which he went about hounding out the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission after the fact suggests that he had not thought the strategy out as well as he should have betrays his intentions. You do not take on the mafia without a bulletproof plan unless you are completely naïve, or reckless, or both.

The prosecutorial strategy is by no means the only one he could have pursued. A couple of years ago, an untouchable politically connected businessman who had earned notoriety selling contraband into neighbouring countries received a special emissary from the president of one of the countries.

The message was that his activities were denying the government revenue and that was construed as economic sabotage and a hostile act. That was it. A president who is serious about fighting corruption does not need to play to the gallery.

Tony Montana: Me, I want what’s coming to me.

Manny: Oh, well, what’s coming to you?

Tony Montana: The world, chico, and everything in it.

Then there is DP Ruto. The credibility of war on graft with Mr Ruto standing by your side is zero. This hotel thing is not going away. It would help if he could surrender the title. He has done it before.

Tony Montana: Who put this thing together? Me, that’s who! Who do I trust? Me!

In my previous column on the subject, I alluded to the possibility that the President’s war on graft is a proxy for a political war. I pointed out that this would be a risky strategy, as it often results in loss of both, that is, the corruption and political wars.

So far, the high-level casualties are from the President’s side of the coalition. The corruption networks are fighting back. They are throwing mud at the President’s allies. Some of it is bound to stick. Mr Ruto has ratcheted the political sabre rattling, including making overtures to the Opposition.

A few days ago, he appealed to Cord leader Raila Odinga to support him in 2022, claiming that he is at the International Criminal Court on account of supporting Mr Odinga’s 2013 presidential bid. Speaking in Kisumu a day later, he advised Mr Odinga to drop Mr Kalonzo Musyoka if he wants to win the next election. Mr Ruto is offering himself as the running mate in 2017. He is telling his boss to call off the graft war or else.

Having made his bed thus, the President must lie on it. What are his options? I see six of them.

Option 1: Declare victory and move on—in other words capitulate. This will entail reinstating those among the suspended people who have been cleared. This is obviously politically expensive, and it will involve considerable loss of face.

Option 2: Negotiate a ceasefire. This has a number of difficulties as it would require cooperation of the anti-corruption commission and probably even the Director of Public Prosecutions who are supposed to be independent.

Option 3: Dispense with the proxy war and take on the political battle directly. In short, dump Mr Ruto. How to go about it? The simplest way is to reconstitute the Cabinet and dump all the URP Cabinet Secretaries. Mr Ruto will have to decide whether to quit or to stay. It won’t matter either way.

Option 4: Fight corruption. This conflicts with re-election strategy, as it means that Jubilee will not be able to finance its re-election by raiding the public purse, and there is also little incentive for the banditos to contribute to a candidate on an anti-corruption crusade. There are two ways he can deal with this.

One is to declare the war on graft as his re-election platform and proceed to prosecute it without fear or favour, and hope that Kenyans will re-elect him on track record. The second is to declare that he will not contest the next election, which would liberate him completely from the conflicting interests.

But he will have to be prepare to pay heavy political and emotional costs. If the rumour mill is to be believed the graft is all around him. Sooner or later the beans will spill and he could find himself having to throw kindred spirits down the chute.

Option 5: Transcend the war on graft by embracing a broader governance reform agenda. This should include deepening devolution, proper restructuring of the provincial administration, security sector reform and electoral reform, including reconstituting the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC).

In short, embrace Cord’s referendum agenda. Some of these issues, like the IEBC, have been anathema to Jubilee.

But if the President has had a road to Damascus moment on graft, he can do the same on other reform issues. Having done so, he might as well invite the Opposition to form a Government of National Unity.

There is, of course, no guarantee that the Opposition would agree, but he would be able to work out some form of cooperation. This would be a lot of humble pie for the President to eat. Quite apart from the fact that humble pie never gave anyone indigestion, the pay-offs are huge.

It would neutralise URP without fighting it. It would give the President a meaningful agenda to deliver on if truth be told, the wheels have completely come off the Jubilee agenda--digital hype can only go so far. It would take the political sting out of the referenda initiatives, and although a referendum may still be required to effect the reforms, he would be supporting not opposing it.

Electoral reforms would give him a shot at winning an untainted election. Even if he lost, his legacy would be secure.

Option Six: Do nothing. Ignore the melodrama and let the chips fall where they may, to use his own words “hands off, eyes off, ears off, everything off”. It works. People will tire. But he needs to grow a thick skin.

This should not be too difficult as he is already practised in the art of unwrapping his meat without so much as a little temptation to peek at the headlines.

Frank Lopez: Lesson number 1, do not underestimate the other guy’s greed.

Elvira: Lesson number two, do not get high on your own supply.

Dr Ndii is Managing Director of Africa Economics [email protected]