War against corruption unlikely to succeed any time soon

The seventh anniversary of the signing of the National Accord and Reconciliation Agreement passed quietly on Saturday, overshadowed by bickering in the National Assembly where the chair of the Public Accounts Committee, Ababu Namwamba, narrowly survived an impeachment attempt following accusations of corruption. During the last week alone, Namwamba was not the only person facing accusations of corruption.

A US corporation was ordered to pay heavy fines because its subsidiary bribed Kenyan officials to obtain tyre supply contracts, an arrangement that recalls the jailing, two weeks ago, of two British company executives for bribing another set of Kenyan officials to secure printing contracts.

When added to a new face of land grabbing, all these developments lead, yet again, to the conclusion that Kenya is facing a serious problem of corruption but lacks credible responses to address the problem. The fight against corruption is unlikely to succeed any time soon, despite the investment in formal anti-corruption arrangements.

Kenya is a post-conflict society following the serious violence of 2007/8. Post-conflict societies exhibit unique governance challenges, some of which are evident in Kenya.

Corruption is defined as behaviour that deviates from the rules for personal gain. One of the problems of conflict is that it reduces orderly society into chaos and displaces the “rules”.

In a post-conflict society, where there has been a very public and recent experience of the large-scale upsetting of the “rules”, determining what constitutes corruption becomes problematic.

Even after formal peace agreements are signed, the effects of conflict linger on, and need a lot of time to overcome. Usually, not all sections of society support the settlement that brings an end to a conflict. There remain sections that hold out against the post-conflict political order, and in whose eyes the new leadership lacks legitimacy.

At the same time, other sections of society embrace the new order, and the fact that one section opposes while another supports the new status quo sustains the polarisation on which conflict was based.

BECOMES A GOVERNANCE TOOL

Secondly, because leadership remains so contested even after the conflict is over, loyalty acquires a premium since it is the currency that sustains the new political leaders in power.

In this context, corruption becomes a governance tool, something that has to be tolerated in order to maintain political stability.

At the same time, corruption becomes opportunistic, something that those who support the new order expect to be allowed to engage in as compensation for their loyalty. The intermittent quarrels within Jubilee about tenders and state jobs reflect this behaviour.

Thirdly, even after a peace agreement, all sides know that conflict can recur. Corruption is seen as necessary for stocking up, in the event that conflict recurs in future.

For this reason, partisans on all sides easily tolerate corruption if perpetrated by their side, and only condemn it if perpetrated by others. That is why both Jubilee and Cord condemn corruption, so long as it is not on their side.

The ending of the Kenyan conflict of 2007/8 was followed by a peace-building programme which had a number of logically constructed steps, over which the chief mediator, Kofi Annan, maintained oversight for the remainder of the grand coalition’s term in office.

When Jubilee came to power in 2013, the mediation platforms were de-activated and, in the period since, there no longer is a reference to the conflict or a shared discussion on how its long-term effects can be addressed.

In Kenya which is ethnically polarised, Jubilee is seen as a continuation of Kibaki’s PNU, if only because of the ethnic base from which it derives its core support base.

However unsatisfactory it was, the Kibaki/Odinga coalition government ensured a measure of inclusion for sections of the population that had come against one another in the conflict of 2007/8.

The Jubilee government, whose composition is constructed on a different basis, has left some of the dominant warring groups of 2007 out of power, before there has been complete recovery from its long-term effects.

DIFFICULT TO ADDRESS

If Jubilee is viewed as occupying the same continuum as PNU before, the feeling by those who supported, say, Odinga against Kibaki, would be that Uhuru Kenyatta is a reincarnation of Kibaki, whom they accuse of electoral fraud, without which their side would probably still be in power.

All significant national challenges, such as insecurity, poverty, unemployment, and now the fight against corruption, are much more difficult to address because of Kenya’s status as a post-conflict society.

It is understandable that to consolidate itself in power, Jubilee would have been tempted to dismantle the platforms created for the mediation process. However, on its own, Jubilee cannot address Kenya’s problems, both because of the polarised nature of the country and also because some of the support for Jubilee was secured, and is currently maintained, on a rent-seeking basis.

Kenyatta’s weak position in Jubilee has been demonstrated by how easily his URP partners get him to maintain the exclusive approach to public appointments, which disproportionately favours the core Jubilee ethnic groups, with the Inspector-General of Police and the Internal Security Cabinet Secretary being the latest examples.

Discarding the mediation process will prove premature, since the resolution of all serious problems has tended to need dialogue. As currently organised, the only thing Jubilee is capable of ensuring is its own survival in power, but cannot solve the country’s problems on its own. Corruption will therefore continue, at least until the next elections.

[email protected]