There's a story told about the hare, the monkey and elephant. Since the giant elephant was eating so much food the hare hatched a scheme. He asked the monkey to plug the elephant’s backside and perhaps he wouldn’t need to eat so much. The monkey liked the idea of getting the elephant to eat less so there would more to go round for everyone else.
Thus convinced, he gathered up the courage and raced up the elephant’s rear and managed to plug its behind. The elephant continued to eat non-stop for weeks without going to the toilet. It grew to a dangerous size. The hare then told the monkey to go and remove the plug as the elephant had grown to gigantic size and was in danger of bursting. Clearly plugging it rear hadn’t stopped it eating.
Unplugging an elephant that had been eating for two weeks was a hazardous exercise and the monkey proceeded with some trepidation. The hare called other sunguras to witness what was going to unfold. The monkey gathered up the courage, raced up to the elephant’s rear and ‘unplugged’ the still feeding beast. Naturally a gigantic explosion of waste immediately engulfed him. As the hare later told the story, between fits of laughter, that wasn’t the joke. The real joke was watching the monkey trying to put the plug back in!
Kenyatta goes after corruption
During his State of the Nation address on March 26, President Kenyatta highlighted the achievements of his administration over the last two years. It was in the tradition that Kenyans are becoming accustomed to a brilliantly written and delivered speech by the most articulate head of state Kenya has ever had. He also dwelt at length on the issue of corruption that has dogged his regime with a series of scandals one after the other literally since he came into office.
Indeed, in the public imagination the Jubilee regime is the most corrupt in Kenya’s history. Given the skills of the President’s handlers in spinning issues and managing public perceptions their total inability to manage the widespread impression that theirs is an out of touch, incompetent, unfeeling, irredeemably corrupt bungling regime has been one of the most curious aspects of the Kenyatta presidency thus far.
Thus was the pressure on the regime vis-à-vis matters corruption that the President took the totally unprecedented step of presenting to parliament a confidential report from the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) of the status of all their key investigations complete with the names of the public officials being investigated.
This startling action that turned the head of state into ‘Whistle-blower Number One’ landed in the August House like a grenade in a confined space; the proverbial hit the fan. There were immediate calls for the named officers to step down, including elected governors and senators.
But the whole effort seemed to have been conjured up on the fly because in the same speech Kenyatta had criticised the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission that has been rendered dysfunctional by infighting between its commissioners on the one hand and between the commissioners and some of the top members of the Secretariat carrying out the most sensitive investigations on the other.
Into muddy waters
To further muddy the waters, the previous week, the President had appointed to senior public position a former minister who has pending extradition proceedings against him for money laundering. This deflated the dramatic anti-corruption effort that seemed a clear demonstration of responsiveness to public and civil society outrage in its regard.
Additionally, the ‘list’ in the confidential dossier of the EACC seemed pretty raw and didn’t paint the institution in a friendly light. When an anti-corruption agency starts looking like someone’s political rungu it turns into spaghetti. Indeed, it was later reported that some of the Commissioners distanced themselves from the report!
Meanwhile, the media was understandably having a field day with the names and allegations presented to parliament by the president. This was also is not illegal, unprocedural as the EACC is supposed to hand over its investigation reports to the Director of Public Prosecutions and report to Parliament overall periodically not rendering the granular details of an official who was alleged to have swindled Uwezo funds from Mwala sub-county of Machakos County.
Squeezed in there were the status of on-going Anglo Leasing investigations, again sloppily presented lending credence to suspicions that the whole exercise was a political smokescreen to divert attention from more catastrophic failures on the security and corruption front. The report helped demonstrate how intertwined they were.
The grim circus worsened when it was reported that senior government officials had been dispatched to the EACC to get the Commissioners to resign, some apparently with the promise of ‘soft landings’ in ambassadorial posts in places like the US.
At the end of the end of it all, the manner in which the EACC handled its information essentially blew it (the EACC) out of the water as a credible investigative body. They appeared to realise this by mid-week when they were reported as saying the list had been doctored – essentially distancing themselves from what the President tabled. The President’s tabling of his ‘dossier’ before parliament politicised the fight against corruption in the most extreme way.
Those who claim to know him say that corruption is an issue that President Kenyatta takes seriously. Well, politicise it and in Africa it usually leads to the meltdown of the agencies charged with investigating it and in an country gripped with systemic graft like Kenya leads to tectonic political shifts whose outcome cannot be predicted by those who kick them off.
Unless, their intention from the very start is to kill the whole war against corruption cold as their most determined foes have always insisted. Politicise the fight against corruption and eventually it turns on you too as a committed gamut of hardened political operators seek to defend themselves with heavy political machetes.
Whoever advised the President on the timing, sequencing and overall approach of his latest effort to tackle corruption head-on did him a great disservice complete with the comedy of officials walking around with resignation letters and bribes of cushy landings in Washington DC.
Indeed, he may find the whole exercise ultimately achieved the opposite effect. Instead of bolstering confidence in the head of state’s commitment to fight graft it deepened the cynicism and scepticism of Kenyans who, while titillated by the details in the dossier, haven’t been moved into a sense of expectation that great things are about to happen on the corruption front.
The Garissa outrage
There is a good reason this should worry the President and his aides. On Wednesday night al Shabaab attacked Garissa University at last count murdering 147 students and injuring 47 or more. This outrage once again fed the feeling of a clueless government blundering about when faced with a ruthless, barbaric, disciplined and determined enemy.
Worse still, the sinking feeling that the key agencies meant to protect Kenyans have been hollowed out by graft and incompetence to the extent that foreign governments give warnings of impending attacks, are told off by our officials and then al Shabaab strikes as if it has comfortably become a player in the Kenyan political scene, keen to make the government look as hapless as possible.
At a time when Kenyans should be pulling together united behind their leaders, however, events have been conjured up it seems to pull them apart. We live in dangerous times – of our own making! Al Shabaab is exploiting our weaknesses and cleavages brilliantly. Our blundering about on the corruption is letting them! Now that’s unacceptable.
Originally published in The Star.
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