Ruto should go for lifestyle audit to prove Ipsos wrong
What you need to know:
- The camp of the aggrieved may have legitimate concerns about how the pollster arrived at its ranking.
What they can’t easily argue with is the timing or the motive of the opinion poll.
- The war on corruption has put government officials and political leaders under increased public scrutiny in recent months.
The polling firm IPSOS has this past week been on the receiving end of attacks by a section of politicians unhappy with their ranking or that of their allies in the findings of a corruption perception survey.
Deputy President William Ruto and Kirinyaga Governor Anne Waiguru have particularly taken umbrage at their being placed first and close second, respectively, on the list that also features President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leaders Raila Odinga and Kalonzo Musyoka. The latter three have yet to publicly comment on the opinion poll, leaving it to the public to guess their individual positions on the graft survey so far.
STARK CONTRAST
Their silence is a stark contrast to the loud complaints of their betters on the charts, who held a meeting at the Deputy President’s Nairobi residence a day after the opinion poll results were released in a dramatic show of solidarity.
The camp of the aggrieved may have legitimate concerns about how the pollster arrived at its ranking or who funded the survey, and they are probably entitled to an explanation.
What they can’t easily argue with is the timing or the motive of the opinion poll. The war on corruption declared by the President has put government officials and political leaders under increased public scrutiny in recent months.
PUBLIC SCRUTINY
Mr Kenyatta has in the past been emphatic that public scrutiny is a key plank of his anti-graft war plan. Indeed the Deputy President has himself backed his boss publicly on the matter, stating he was ready to be subjected to a lifestyle audit along with the President.
If and when that happens, Kenyans may have a better tool to rate their leaders on the corruption perception index. For now, government officials and political leaders should be ready to bear with people using whatever information is out there to do their own scrutiny, including opinion poll findings, the so-called fake media headlines, bar talk and village gossip.
Methinks that if Mr Ruto and his camp of the aggrieved strongly disagree with the IPSOS survey respondents the way they seem to do, they should simply fast track their date with the lifestyle audit team to confirm or disapprove.
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Meanwhile something even more interesting seems to be happening on the political scene. Some people who only recently would laugh off any perception of graft about them or ignore it all together are all of a sudden coming out to fight off media reports. Does it have anything to do with the fear of Director of Public Prosecutions Noordin Haji and his newspaper reading habits? I’ve noticed a number of statements from his office suggesting he can pursue a case based on media reports. You know them; the ones that begin with, “My attention has been drawn to an editorial …” Or, might 2022 be the election when corruption finally gets to become a serious campaign issue?
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