We cannot fight graft when we employ corrupt incompetents

When he launched his Taskforce on Parastatal Reforms in July 2013, President Uhuru Kenyatta asked some cardinal questions of the team jointly led by his adviser on constitutional and legislative affairs, Mr Abdikadir Mohamed, and the managing director of the Kenyatta family-owned Commercial Bank of Africa, Mr Isaac Awuondo: “Where does Wanjiku stand in all this? Is the public sector working for her at all? Is she getting value for her precious investment?”

The task force kept this in mind when it released its report and recommendations just three months later. It had found itself confronting the corrosive impact of the mali ya umma (public wealth) mentality that crippled public corporations and statutory and regulatory bodies.

This is the mentality which holds that public resources do not actually belong to anybody, and therefore are there for the looting. Denizens of president Daniel arap Moi’s regime were notorious for asking “Is it your mother’s wealth?” of anybody who questioned the theft of public funds.

The Jubilee administration promised to eradicate this culture. It promised radical reform of public entities so that redundant institutions are shut down and the remaining ones made to earn their keep.

Count yet another broken Jubilee promise. If the recent slates of government appointments are anything to go by, the President consigned the report to the dustbin unopened and unread.

The latest appointments last Friday were yet another indication that when it comes to public service, the Jubilee regime is more attuned to rewarding political cronies. This comes at the expense of committed professionals who would make a real difference towards transforming State corporations into key drivers of national development goals, wealth creation, and employment generation.

The first big round of appointments last year and the smaller slate last week demonstrate that the premium, with just a handful of exceptions, is on buying the loyalty of failed politicians and rewarding dullard friends and relatives who would not manage to get jobs in a competitive field.

With the big number of appointments last April, the Institute of Directors complained that the government had reneged on its promise and instead gone for mediocrity: “What is coming out is a politically influenced process… we don’t see people of good repute, we don’t see people trained in corporate governance”.

PUBLIC APPOINTMENTS

Nothing has changed despite the government’s own claims then and now that public appointments reflect competence, expertise, professionalism, and diversity.

Last year when complaints were raised about the preponderance of failed politicians and retired civil servants in government appointments, the State House spin machine was activated to sell the nonsense that the lack of skills on display did not matter because boards of directors were not responsible for the day-to-day running of parastatals.

What the limp excuse forgot is that directors are directly responsible for corporate oversight. They are also — in theory at least because this function has been appropriated by the presidency and Cabinet ministers — supposed to be in charge of recruiting managers, who report to the board.

Now, if the boards are largely populated by incompetent, corrupt individuals, you can be sure that they will be ill-suited to ensure good corporate governance and strategic decision-making. The recruitment process for top managers will be dictated by nepotism, tribalism, and political expediency.

Managers so appointed will owe their first loyalties, not to the health of the corporation, but to their godfathers, who will want their rewards from the corporate coffers.

And then we can sit back and helplessly lament that we are unable to fight corruption, yet we are the ones who sowed the seeds in the first place.

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On another tack, State House must be populated by extremely idle characters in the Presidential Strategic Communications Unit and the rival Digital Communications team forever snapping at its heels. Somebody took the time to pen an extremely noxious response to an unflattering New York Times article on former International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo.

Obviously the person had not read the article or did quite comprehend it. But even if it reflected badly on President Kenyatta as an accused in the post-election violence case, the response, and the decidedly un-presidential tenor, was totally uncalled for. There is more to communications than insults and big words.

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