Sadly there’s no will to fight graft in Kenya, so let’s just stumble along

What you need to know:

  • Matters will get worse if it turns out the EACC cannot be trusted either.
  • The war against corruption is perennially held hostage to blame games between the EACC and the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Officialdom always froths in the mouth whenever foreign governments and donor institutions cite endemic corruption as emblematic of Kenya as the wildebeest migration or Tusker lager.

Yet it is quite true. The emerging revelations that oversight bodies and official agencies mandated to prosecute graft have become part of the gravy train show the whole system has gone to hell.

I don’t belong to the band of Facebook loonies who are forever moaning — because of electoral sour grapes — that Kenya has become a “failed state”.

But when members of Parliament’s oversight committees scramble for multi-million-shilling payoffs from the same institutions they are investigating, it is a sign matters have gone beyond the pale.

It’s a long way from the days when the odd MP would be paid a few thousand shillings by some hustler to ask specific queries at Question Time.

Last week, the country was treated to an unprecedented drama in the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), the most powerful of the parliamentary watchdog committees. The chairman, a fellow given to pompous but basically threadbare rhetoric, stood accused of taking hefty bribes.

He survived ouster by a whisker, not because the allegations were disproved, but because he reportedly sought to drag other members into the muck.

The war is not over. His enemies, who are the majority in the committee, have vowed to regroup and kick him out this week.

Others want to disband the tainted PAC and reconstitute it afresh.

Matters will get worse if it turns out the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) cannot be trusted either.

BIG DISAPPOINTMENT

In a recent and quite bizarre shouting match between the Ombudsman and the commission, the latter was accused of allowing certain of its officers to be allotted houses by the super-rich NSSF.

If that is true, it would amount to gross impropriety because the EACC is supposed to be investigating the fund over its controversial multi-billion-shilling Tassia housing scheme in Nairobi.

The CID is currently investigating the Ombudsman’s allegations, which EACC has denied. It’s indeed a weird reversal of roles: The investigator — EACC — is itself being investigated.

Despite the fat budget taxpayers give it, the EACC has turned out to be a big disappointment. They make a big fuss of calling in soiled public figures for “grilling,” but then nothing happens.

What should be our own ethics and anti-graft war is instead being prosecuted by foreign governments — like with the “chickengate” convictions in the UK and the latest fine by the US government against the Goodyear tyre company for bribing Kenyan officials.

After years of delay, the EACC promised to pass on the Anglo-Leasing files for prosecution on Friday. Nobody should have any illusions that this was due to improved work ethics on the part of the commission. The EACC was acting on a deadline imposed by the National Assembly.

The war against corruption is perennially held hostage to blame games between the EACC and the Director of Public Prosecutions.

The EACC must forward its case files to the DPP for prosecution, and Mr Keriako Tobiko, who has a sonorous voice he is evidently quite fond of, likes to say he can’t act when the commission has not handed him any prosecutable case.

Still, the DPP’s office has a lot to answer for. In numerous cases in which the public has an interest and which have nothing to do with the EACC, Mr Tobiko is just as guilty of dragging his feet.

Again, he is quick to direct the police to investigate high-profile cases.

But once the files get to him, nothing more is heard. We may soon forget there were mass killings in Kapedo and Baragoi and Mandera and Mpeketoni. After some scattered arrests, these cases appear to be in limbo. I’m sure the DPP will blame the courts for the delay, and the blame games will continue.

Today I have no energy left to go on about the courts, which have shown a strange propensity — perhaps to please foreign interests — to deny bail to wildlife poachers while freely granting the same to hardcore terror suspects.