Kenya Social Forum and Transparency International held a public debate on the War on Corruption on Feb 17th at Lillian Towers. Speakers included Gladwell Otieno, MP’s Omingo Magara & Billow Kerow, David Makali of the Standard and Patrick Kiage of the LSK.

MP Magara said
– Even though donors offered parliament free Internet connectivity, and computerization of all parliamentary processes, nothing has happened for four years.
– He has to use a cyber café in parliament.
– As a former tax collector, he’s now shocked now that he can see how taxpayers money is spent by the government.
– A bill he introduced to make the parliamentary process open to the public was defeated. He promised to submit to TI a list of all MP’s who voted down his motion.

MP Kerrow said
– Says parliament is hampered by what it can do
– Media reporting of parliament is poor; 5 hours of debate is reduced to 1 minute on the nightly news
– Government motions and bills take up 90% of parliamentary debate time
– Parliament must publicise all that it does
– Says he asked Mwiraria about two of the phantom payments (Universal Satspace: internet bandwidth & Silversonic: police vehicles) in July 2004 that Clay spoke about – the Minister was unable to explain what the payments were for, or why he had for two years paid for a bogus deal set up by KANU
– Claims that, just before he retired, Githongo had received the Kroll Report on assets abroad held by Kenyans, including ministers. He will push for the report to be tabled in parliament.

My take on Corruption is that it is a clear and present danger and it will continue for decades to come unless Kenyans change their thinking regarding corruption. To understand the prevalence of corruption today, it is useful to look at the corruption of years past (Moi years) – from which one can see that (i) there are no consequences of corruption to a minister – no Minister who had corruption allegations about him ever lost a parliamentary seat or was charged in court/resigned, and if they were voted out/sacked it was for reasons that had nothing to do with corruption. (ii) That Kenyans care more about development, In fact such ‘tainted’ ministers brought more development to their constituents than their less controversial counterparts (iii) therefore Ministers today expect Kenyans to be as docile about corruption as they were during Moi days and wait for development. (Kibaki to Ndwiga: kwani umekula mbuzi yanani?)

So perhaps the Government, rightly feels, that development matters more to voters than corruption – and voters rarely see the correlation between corruption and their lives. While they applauded Ministers who build hospitals and roads, they failed to realise that corruption left their hospitals without medicine, and their new tarmac roads soon collapsed as they were sub-standard.

Githongo resigned because he was serving a Government that had no interest in his work or and was, in fact, sabotaging his work (they actually cancelled his anti-corruption office in the 2004 reshuffle before restoring him hours after diplomats raised a fuss)

Following Gladwell Otieno and John Githongo, next to resign should be Mutava Musyimi, the entire Constitution Review Committee, Ali Mwakwere, and we should give Ringera time to prove whether he’s serving Kenyans or paying lip service.

Also to resign should be the public communications (propaganda) secretary, Dr. Alfred Mutua. The real government spokesman, with the access, and authority to speak for the president, is the less eloquent, but all-powerful Amb. Francis Muthaura. He issued a statement accepting Githongo’s resignation from State House, while Dr. Mutua issued a statement on a vague radio station implying that Githongo had left for greener pastures. You can catch Dr. Mutua wax poetic on Citizen TV on Saturday afternoon.