Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki, faced with blistering criticism for not doing enough to fight rampant government corruption, on Wednesday renewed pledges to battle graft vigorously and in a transparent manner.
”We want everything known because there should be nothing secretive in the way we manage government affairs,” Kibaki said while swearing in a new government minister in State House, Nairobi.
”The management of public affairs requires that nothing is done in secret,” he said. ”We should be open to the public in our day-to-day duties because this is what is expected of us as leaders.”
Kibaki’s comments, released in a statement by the presidential press service, come amid a firestorm of domestic and international complaints that the Kenyan government has failed to meet vows to crack down on corruption.
The remarks were issued shortly after Attorney General Amos Wako announced that six sacked ex-government officials will stand trial on graft charges for their roles in two suspect deals that cost the state about $35-million.
The prosecutions are the first corruption trials to be brought since foreign donors unleashed a torrent of criticism against Kibaki’s administration earlier this month.
In his comments, Kibaki said transparent government operations are essential ”as the fight against corruption enters the crucial prosecution stage this year”.
Kenya’s leading donors have all warned that inaction against graft could threaten much-needed assistance, and the United States has already suspended about $2,5-million in anti-corruption aid.
Despite Kibaki’s repeated pledges to clamp down on graft, donors estimate corruption may have cost Kenya up to a billion dollars since 2002, nearly a fifth of the country’s 2004/05 official state Budget of about $5,5-billion. — Sapa-AFP