Chicken claims an insult to electoral and exam agencies
What you need to know:
- The British are using the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1906, completely oblivious of the fact Kenya has an Ethics and Anti-Corruption Act, 2009, and the country is preoccupied with really serious fraud — there are 12,000 ghost workers who draw pay from the public purse every month; and Sh338 billion from the 2011/12 budget that cannot be accounted for.
- The British must climb down from their high horse. Accusing several Kenyans of accepting a mere Sh34 million in total is not only a bad joke but gives corruption a bad name.
Britain’s matchless capacity for cheek has been on display this week after the Serious Fraud Office pushed prosecutors to file scandalous corruption charges in the Southwark Crown Court.
Nothing could be more insulting to Kenyans than to claim that big people in big public offices in a nation populated by big game — including elephant, hippo, rhino and wildebeest — could be tempted by the taste of a little flightless bird.
The particulars of the charges are as pesky as they are puzzling: The directors of Smith & Ouzman — as well as their firm — are being accused of paying just over Sh40 million as bribes — which they nicknamed ‘chicken’, to public officials. With a high-sounding name like Serious Fraud Office, one would have expected the British outfit to have avoided embarrassing itself by making such frivolous accusations.
After Eric Wainaina’s emblematic Nchi ya Kitu Kidogo (nation of petty corruption) song, Kenyans styled up and stopped accepting small bribes. Those Kenyans who were complicit in this conspiracy to embarrass the country by agreeing to be linked to a £349,057.39 bribe claim are traitors.
The British are using the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1906, completely oblivious of the fact Kenya has an Ethics and Anti-Corruption Act, 2009, and the country is preoccupied with really serious fraud — there are 12,000 ghost workers who draw pay from the public purse every month; and Sh338 billion from the 2011/12 budget that cannot be accounted for.
The EACC is still trying to figure out if the daylight payment to Anglo-Leasing and Finance Company debts to the tune of Sh2 billion this year is petty theft.
In the midst of these difficult decisions, the British now want Kenya to discuss a mere Sh34 million paid by a foreign company to a few patriots and painlessly footed by the taxpayer five years ago. They want scrutiny of bus tickets and hotel accommodation, and bad food in London.
If anyone had wanted to load a commission on any of the printing of materials, nothing would have been easier than to wait a short two years when the country would need 84 million ballot papers for the 2013 General Election.
And that is without counting the 16,000 biometric voter registration kits, or the 33,000 electronic voter identification kits.
STOP THIS JOKE
The British must climb down from their high horse. Accusing several Kenyans of accepting a mere Sh34 million in total is not only a bad joke but gives corruption a bad name.
This is a naked attempt to besmirch the country’s democratic elections, starting with the flawless referendum in 2010, and puts a question mark on the examinations processes, which have successfully fought back allegations of cheating year on year.
There is not a single person in the world who does not know that the 2010 referendum was a flawless exercise that was not even contested in court. It was a rehearsal for the 2013 General Election, for which the same British awarded the IEBC.
The insinuation that every ballot paper, every optical mark reader, and every purchase was loaded with a commission nicknamed chicken is odious. It is a red herring to give credence to endless demands to reform the elections management body.
These endless integrity challenges are mere excuses for disrupting and destroying the excellent institutional memory of institutions, thus forcing former procurement officers like the honourable Trevy Oyombra to become agents of foreign masters.
It is not difficult to see that the infamous unholy international alliance of Obama-Ocampo-Odinga, which has tormented the country for years, has now been joined by Smith & Ouzman. Every British citizen should hang his head in shame.
