Jail one or two high-profile culprits as deterrent to others

President Uhuru Kenyatta. He has ordered speedy investigations into the death of Chris Msando and Carol Ngumbu. FILE PHOTO | SAMUEL MIRING'U | PSCU

What you need to know:

  • We are caught up in situation where keeping quiet is no longer an option.
  • Corruption is an unpleasant truth.

In this country, only a congenital imbecile gets to be punished for profiting from corruption. The rest get by on court injunctions and delays until their cases grow cold or they die of old age. Isn’t it curious that for the past three decades of our existence as a nation we have heard nothing but empty rhetoric about fighting graft? The number of successful prosecution and indictment of high-profile cases can be counted on the fingers of one hand, yet the public keeps losing billions of shillings every year.

The robust exchange of views between the heads of institutions charged with fighting graft during the anti-corruption and accountability summit held at State House, Nairobi, on Tuesday, was stimulating, to say the least. Kenyans need such debates more often and they need to be told the stark truth in plain language. The only problem is that the summit merely whetted the appetite of the listeners without delivering any of the answers they craved.

Before Tuesday, I always believed that the only reason we have been unable to slay the hydra-headed monster is due to lack of political will to fight it. In fact that is always what we have been made to believe by politicians seeking to capitalise on this national malaise. But now I am not too sure, and I was persuaded so by no less than the President when he “stormed” the summit and delivered a few home truths: the institutions set up to fight corruption have failed the country and allowed thieves to clog the justice delivery system.

The closest we ever came to fighting graft was immediately after the Narc administration came to power. That is when citizens, who are either apathetic or willing participants, sometimes took the law into their hands and arrested the culprits. I remember when a policewoman in Kiambu was chased by matatu passengers for openly soliciting a bribe. Unfortunately, this public intolerance did not last long.

PETTY CORRUPTION

In any case, only those engaging in petty corruption were rumbled, while those who stole billions of shillings through the Goldenberg scam hatched 25 years ago are still trooping to courts seeking injunctions while others have died. And we are not even talking about the Anglo Leasing scam, which came about seven years later, and many others.

Now, to go back to the summit which was, to me the highlight of the week, there is a feeling that in future, such meetings should be structured in such a manner that they are not used as an opportunity for the anti-graft institutions to exonerate themselves from accusations that their performance has been generally lackadaisical.

When the director of public prosecutions accuses the police and anti-corruption organs of presenting to him half-baked investigations which they cannot act on, the police accuse the courts of releasing suspects on bail or slapping injunctions on investigations, judges accuse everyone else of doing shoddy work, political opportunists accuse the presidency of condoning the vice and the President accuses every other institution of letting him down, what are Kenyans supposed to think? The last thing they need is to be reminded of the catchy refrain to Shaggy’s song, “It Wasn’t Me”. They need answers and the way forward.

APPORTION BLAME

It is easy to apportion blame in these situations of runaway corruption. For some reason, some people believe that the Kenyan Ethics and Anti-corruption Authority is an effete outfit which has been rendered so by design. Others believe the National Police Service is so riddled with graft it is unable to move against anyone else. Still others think the directorate of Public Prosecutions dilly dallies instead of pursuing the thieves and other ne’er-do-wells vigorously because it has been compromised by corruption cartels. But the one thing they all agree on is that the justice system seems to be busy sleeping on the job instead of doing all it can to fight graft.

We are caught up in conundrum where keeping quiet is no longer an option. Corruption is an unpleasant truth but talking about it candidly is a necessary first step, and hence the summit was not a wasted opportunity. The second, and perhaps more important, is to jail one or two high-profile culprits as a deterrent to others. Fighting corruption is not just about railing against a few rotten policemen; they are not the only ones taking this country to the cleaners.