President deserves public support in graft war

President Kenyatta’s move on Thursday to suspend five cabinet secretaries, three principal secretaries, six governors and two senators because they have been fingered by the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) is a welcome, bold and long overdue step in the war against graft in government.

This could be the defining moment and action in the war against graft. The President is simply saying that henceforth if you steal public money, you will face the music.

He is making it clear that those who steal from public coffers shall be held accountable. And, he is saying, public money cannot be stealing itself.

Therefore, the President made a deliberate and determined decision to wrest the names of public servants and the alleged offences against them from the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission and hand them over to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Keriako Tobiko for investigations and prosecution within a specific timeframe — 60 days.

The President has lit a flaming and red hot fire under the DPP’s seat. He wants to see action taken against those on the list and if none happens he wants to know why.

If it is the case that the DPP does not have evidence against the names the President gave him, the Head of State is saying he wants to see the real culprits arrested and arraigned in 60 days.

Why? Because money moves from one institution to another electronically; it is moved from the Central Bank and or Treasury to ministries in the same way and it is moved within these ministries to departments, suppliers and staff the same way.

Why, then, the President is asking, have the anti-graft agencies not taken the culpable to court?

Why, the President is asking, have allegations been made against some people by EACC or the Efficiency Monitoring Unit (EMU), parliamentary oversight committees and other anti-graft agencies and then everything has gone cold and quiet?

That is why the President has circumvented these agencies and gone personally and publicly to the DPP.

BELONG IN JAIL

Second, the President is saying that it does not matter who you are; as long as you are suspected of corruption; as long as you are suspected of abuse of office; as long as suspicion has been cast on your performance as a public servant, you shall be investigated and arraigned or cleared on the strength of the evidence gathered and through due process.

That is why he has moved against ministers and governors, including some who the public has come to regard as best performing and friends of the President. The message is this; you may be the best performing, but if you are stealing what you are supposed to be earning the exchequer; if you are earning plenty so that you may steal more, you belong in jail.

The President wants a clean break with the past where public money is stolen and no thief is arrested and arraigned or EACC and EMU stage high-profile arrests and then nothing happens thereafter. That is a vote of no confidence against existing anti-graft agencies and a demand for a paradigm shift and new direction in fighting graft.

The President deserves the support of the public because he can rest assured he will be fought. As I gathered information for this piece I was stunned to hear that there were, in fact, two lists in circulation.

One was, of course, real and the other fictional. Some names were missing on either list, but both were aimed at the media and, ultimately, the public.

It is possible that some people who had access to the real list were not amused some names which have been publicly linked to graft were not on it and introduced such names to the list. The point is that inventing lists cannot help the anti-graft war because it will frustrate, confuse and harm investigations.

This is especially so because this is not going to be a tidy matter. Those on the now infamous list will challenge the President’s edict in court; there are those who will politicise the matter and, it is possible that the investigations and impending prosecutions could unleash forces hitherto not envisaged, especially in the political arena.

Consider the following: Since the President has passed a no-confidence vote against EMU and EACC, should they continue to exist? I think they should not. If we are not ashamed to partake in corruption will naming shame us into quitting? No. What else needs to come into force?

A deliberate campaign aimed at changing entrenched attitudes towards corruption.

Opanga is a media consultant; [email protected]