Fireworks as graft takes centre stage in poll campaigns

Corruption has featured prominently in the presidential campaign rallies in the past week.

President Uhuru Kenyatta and challenger Raila Odinga have been trading accusations and counter-accusations over who is more corrupt and under the control of corruption cartels.

The issue was triggered by a Nation exposé at the beginning of the week detailing how controversial businessman Jimi Wanjigi, who was mentioned in the Anglo Leasing scandal, is playing a key role as financier and strategist in Mr Odinga’s National Super Alliance, Nasa, presidential campaign machinery.

Mr Wanjigi has made a fortune from brokering government tenders in the lucrative and secretive military and police procurements.

MAJOR INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS

Beyond the security sector, he also had his fingers in major infrastructure projects straddling airports, railways, highways, seaports, oil pipelines and power stations.

He has often fuelled his business deals with keen political instincts, inserting himself into governing networks with cash infusions and deft backroom deal making.

Before crossing over to Nasa, Mr Wanjigi had been closely associated with Mr Kenyatta’s political aspirations.

He helped broker the deal that brought Mr Kenyatta and his now deputy William Ruto back together again under the Jubilee banner ahead of the 2013 elections.

GOVERNING CLASSES

Prior to that, he had played a background role in the negotiations that saw Mr Odinga join President Mwai Kibaki as Prime Minister in the Grand Coalition Government put together to halt the 2007-2008 post-election violence.

That was what the Nation interpreted as State Capture, a phenomenon that makes part of the Nation Media Group’s 10-point Nation Agenda outlining the key issues that should frame the campaign discourse leading to the General Election in August.

State Capture refers to big-time official corruption often fuelled or controlled by elements with a hold on the governing classes.

CROOKED PROCUREMENT

It involves rapacious looting of national economies through crooked procurement on major projects, and is often tied to transnational crimes such as narcotics smuggling, the trafficking ivory, rhino horn and other trophies from endangered game, the illicit arms trade, money laundering and other criminal activities often also have links to funding terrorism. 

The responses to the Nation report were interesting because they were not so much about either party proclaiming its innocence, but about accusing the other side of being corrupt too, or more corrupt.

Jubilee seized on the article to pounce on Nasa, which they accused of having no moral authority to pontificate on corruption because they were also associated with corruption cartels.

EPICENTRE OF CORRUPTION

Nasa responded that Jubilee was the epicentre of corruption having failed to tackle the vice, accusing its two main leaders of being direct beneficiaries of graft.

The exchanges did little to provide direction on which party was actually sincere on its pledges to fight corruption.

Although corruption is its Achilles' Heel, having been seen to fail on the National Youth Service, Ministry of Health and other scandals, Jubilee does in its manifesto pledge tough action to arrest the rot.

It outlines legal and administrative steps that it will take to boost the war on corruption.

PROSECUTION AGENTS

This includes the investigative and prosecution agents, enhancing the capacity of the judiciary, seeking stiffer punishment and enforcing ethics requirements.

The Nasa manifesto includes much of the same, but also stresses the personal responsibility that its leadership and elected and appointed officials must bear in the fight against corruption.

What both are not addressing, whether in their manifestos or on the campaign rhetoric is what they will do about those in their respective entourages who fail the integrity test.

ETHICS AND INTEGRITY

If the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission strictly enforced the Constitutional and Statute law requirements on ethics and integrity in leadership and the public service, it is likely that many Jubilee and Nasa candidates, including at the top tiers, would be disqualified from running for elections.

Many have been mentioned adversely in various reports either as drivers or direct beneficiaries of corruption.

That might explain why pledges by both formations to fight corruption might be received with scepticism.