The diplomatic community in Kenya has coined a new phrase to describe the country’s new political leadership for its inability to fight corruption.
The diplomats describe Kenya as ”a new boat sailing without a functional captain”.
The captain, President Mwai Kibaki, whom the diplomats refer to, came to office 18 months ago, promising electorates zero tolerance against corruption. Instead, a new culture of get-rich-quickly, embraced by his cohorts, is setting new records.
Diplomats say Kibaki has maintained a hands-off leadership policy, even though his boat is sinking and threatening to hit the rocks, thanks to widespread corruption.
Kenya has been described by anti-graft watchdogs like Transparency International (TI) as the third most corrupt nation in Africa after Nigeria and Cameroon.
This has prompted donors to threaten to withhold funding if the government does not clean up its house.
Spearheading the campaign, the European Union (EU), which had approved about $59-million for Kenya’s budget support, made it clear to Kibaki in a recent meeting in Nairobi that the funds would be withheld for further review in September depending on concrete action by his government to uproot corruption.
The EU provides funding to developing countries under the Cotonou agreement, through the European Development Fund (EDF). Article 9 of the agreement states that EDF funding is only made available subject to a country’s record in democratisation, human rights and transparency.
Kenya participated in the talks that led to the agreement, together with 70 other countries in Africa, Pacific and the Caribbean, in Cotonou, Benin in 2000.
The European Union is the second largest donor to Kenya after the World Bank. The East African nation gets about $98,7-million in development aid from the European Union every year.
The EU’s threat to review funding came just a week after a bitter exchange of words between the British ambassador Edward Clay and Kibaki’s ministers over corruption. In a graphic description of corruption practises in high offices, Clay remarked, ”Right now it is grand corruption which fills the headlines . Evidently, the practitioners now in government have the arrogance, greed and perhaps a desperate sense of panic to lead them to eat like gluttons.”
”But they can hardly expect us not to care when their gluttony causes them to vomit all over our shoes; do they really expect us to ignore the lurid and mostly accurate details conveyed in the commendably free media and pursued by a properly curious parliament?” he posed.
Addressing the British Business Association in Nairobi on July 13, Clay claimed corruption had cost Kenya 15-billion shillings (about $187-million) since Kibaki’s government came to power in December 2002.
His remarks sparked bitter reactions from cabinet ministers, some of whom called on him to pack his bags. But to the dismay of the ministers, the United States and Norway joined the bandwagon registering their impatience at the slow pace of the government’s efforts to fight corruption.
It was Clay’s remarks that sparked the July 21 meeting in which Kibaki met with diplomats of 19 EU missions. The tense four-hour meeting saw the donors present Kibaki with a list of key demands for action, including sacking of public servants implicated in corruption, with specific mention of the Anglo-Leasing scandal, considered to be the biggest scam to have hit the government.
The Anglo-Leasing saga, unearthed in April, involves irregular allocation of tenders and payments towards making terrorist-proof passports and the construction of a forensic laboratory for the country’s criminal investigations department. The payments totalling about $88,7-million were made to Anglo-Leasing, a foreign company whose owners the government claims are not known.
Key government officials implicated in the scandal include finance minister David Mwiraria and his national security counterpart, Chris Murungaru. Both have distanced themselves from the scandal, which critics say poses a litmus test to the government’s commitment to fight corruption.
Instead Kibaki fired Joseph Magari, the permanent secretary in the ministry of finance and Sylvester Mwaliko, another top civil servant in the ministry of home affairs.
The July 21 meeting has led to the establishment of a National Anti-Corruption Campaign Steering Committee. The 34-member team’s mandate centres on advocacy to change perceptions and attitudes on corruption, culminating in a graft-free society whose values are integrity and accountability.
Critics say the team does not hold the key to a graft-free Kenya, since it lacks power to take decisions. ”The team is toothless since it is answerable to the president. A serious team is supposed to be independent and away from patronage of the state,” said Mutahi Ngunyi, a regional political commentator.
He described the appointment of the team ”as a catwalk and showbiz for the donors.”
Some commentators say Kibaki’s National Rainbow Coalition (Narc), which came to power on a ticket of good governance is going the way of its predecessor, the Kenya African National Union (Kanu). Kanu, led by former president Daniel arap Moi, was associated with massive corruption.
”Corruption is being passed from Kanu to Narc because there has not been a radical departure from the past. Many of the key figures in the former government associated with the biggest corruption scandals are ministers in the present government,” said Gladwell Otieno, executive director of Transparency International-Kenya Chapter.
The Goldenberg scandal is considered the biggest in the Kanu history. The scandal, which took place in the early 1990s, involved Goldenberg International, a company that is accused of having milked the country’s economy dry through a scandalous export compensation scheme. The nation lost an estimated $600-million in the scam.
Key figures in the then government implicated in the scam include George Saitoti who was then vice president and finance minister. Currently, Saitoti is the minister of education, science and technology in the Kibaki government. But he has denied any involvement in the Goldberg scandal.
Otieno says Kibaki should have honoured his election pledge by ”bringing into his government new faces: people with integrity”.
Critics say corruption has reinvented itself, towering over Kibaki who, they claim, seems powerless to prevent his close aides from corrupt practices.
”He has to make a choice between keeping his friends and plunging the country in deeper corruption crises or drop his friends and save the country,” said Preston Chitere, a research fellow at the Institute of Policy Analysis and Research. His organisation, based in Nairobi conducts research on policy issues. — IPS