On corruption war you got it all wrong Mr President, the buck stops with you

So the President cannot effectively fight corruption because he is handicapped by the Constitution? So commentators are sympathising with a hamstrung President and demonising a progressive constitution for his predicament?

I believe not the President nor commentators. One, if you want to know if you have a lawmaker worth your vote, confront him with an urgent people-anchored challenge. If he swiftly designs a bill to fix what’s amiss, then, you know you have a leader.

Two, when the Orange Democratic Movement, the Council of Governors and Gatundu South MP Moses Kuria were separately, albeit for different reasons, convinced that the Constitution is impeding Kenya’s development, they sought to collect signatures to force referenda to change the status quo.

Three, persuaded that Kenyans are over-represented and that this is an unwelcome addition to an already bloated public wage bill, I argued here last

December for a rethink of the constitution with a view to amending it to reduce spending by government.

From the above examples, political leaders have sought to bring about changes to the law to make governance better or feather their patches even.

Columnists, agitators for social justice and thought leaders, too, have weighed in and suggested varied solutions to Kenya’s challenges.

President Kenyatta professes to have fought corruption harder than his three predecessors and to be frustrated at the lack of results. If the reason for his failure is the law, or specifically the basic law, why has the President not sought changes to Kenya’s legal architecture to bolster his anti-graft campaign?

I hold that the President is not hobbled by the law but by the collusion and connivance in government and the glacier-like progression of agenda and tasks by government apparatchiks. Four examples will illustrate my position. The first, and on which the President has pronounced himself, is the bloated public wage bill.

In April of 2013, fresh from his inauguration, President Kenyatta said the public payroll was gobbling up 40 per cent of government’s revenue. This, he said, was unsustainable and asked government officers to work to bring it down.

In October, as the President decried the fact that a whopping Sh300 billion of public money could not be accounted for, it was evident his earlier order on the payroll had not been acted upon.

Now, which is my second example, he was looking at a different cancer in government, the wanton wastage of public resources.

January 2014 started with another scandal: Taxpayers were losing Sh1.8 billion to ghost workers annually. But it was not until March that the then Ministry of Devolution and National Planning announced it would carry out an audit of staff to weed out ghosts.

It was carried out but, as usual, no ghosts were weeded out even as I pointed out here that in the age of the Integrated Financial Management System there should not be a ghost worker on any public payroll. I called this ghost claim deliberate thievery.

It was at this time that the President announced that he and Deputy President William Ruto, as well as public service top dogs and parastatal fat cats, would take a 20 per cent pay cut.

ACCEPTABLE PUBLIC PAYROLL

In tandem, and with the President’s blessings, the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) embarked on a national dialogue aimed at finding a formula for scaling down and designing an acceptable public payroll. But, next the Sarah Serem-led SRC surprisingly embarked on an evaluation of public sector jobs, usually a drawn- out process. Two years later, the commission has not delivered on either undertaking.

My third example regards what played out before the President at State House on Tuesday. Public service bigwigs excel in passing the buck or blame where grey areas or loopholes exist.

So police and anti-graft investigators blamed prosecutors who, in turn, blamed the State Law Office, which quickly fingered the Judiciary for the stalled anti-graft war. The President, in turn, blamed all of them for his failure yet the buck must stop with him.

Last, the Presidential Task Force on Parastatal Reform. It recommended drastic reduction — in fact halving — of state owned firms in its October 2013 report. Nothing has happened since.

Therefore, Mr President, your first challenge is that government snails and snores on the big challenges affecting the public.

The second is that painstaking investigation, diligent evidence-gathering and close coordination, which are crucial to successful graft prosecutions, are not trademarks of the anti-graft agencies.

The solution? Sir, streamline the public service for reduction of wastage, increased efficiency and swift delivery of services and agenda.

[email protected]