Why The Fight Against Corruption in Kenya is a Distant Mirage
On the surface, there is a lot of activity going in the fight against corruption in Kenya. Finally, it appears as though thieves who have been stealing from public coffers are destined to court, the loot recovered and the thieves jailed to serve as an example to others seeking to steal from Kenyans.
However, a closer look at Uhuru Kenyatta’s war on corruption appears to be yielding no tangible results. There is no doubt that the act of arresting a suspect and charging him or her with corruption is a dramatic process that also draws a lot of public interest. But if one question can be posed: where is the result in this anti-corruption war?
First, several alleged thieves have been brought to court but non has been sent to jail. Instead, almost all of them have managed to obtain bails worth millions of Kenyan shillings using the very funds they are alleged to have stolen and not many Kenyans seem to be asking the difficult questions.
Secondly, it appears as though as soon as these alleged thieves obtain bail using the same stolen money, the cases somehow slide quietly into oblivion. The case of Evans Kidero, former Nairobi governor, is a case in point.
Kidero has now been arrested twice but on every occasion, he has always managed to slip out of custody through some bail involving millions of Kenyans shillings. Although he has been charged, there is no serious move towards unearthing details of the case to enable the public to understand the scope of the theft when he was in office. The same case applies to all suspected thieves who were said to have been involved in the Ksh 8 billion National Youth scandal. They are all back home watching TV. Why is no one going to jail?
The answer is that those who stole did so with other big sharks in government who must not be named including Uhuru Kenyatta. Taking the suspects to court is, therefore, good for propaganda but rest assured that if there will be any jail sentences, it will be less than five percent of those already charged.
The big problem is that those charged with corruption cannot be taken to jail because the whole activity of going after the corrupt is a PR exercise to dupe the gullible public. Under the system, the corrupt members of the ruling class are known to protect one another from real prosecution especially in cases of corruption because theft of public funds amounting to billions of Kenyan shillings usually involves a network of people within the system.
It follows that prosecuting any one person can lead to the exposure of a whole network of highly placed individuals in high positions of leadership. For this reason, the ruling class usually strikes a deal with those charged that they play to the gallery without the risk of being taken to jail. Consequently, Kenyans should expect no result in the current war against corruption.
At best, and if there is anyone who will proceed to jail because of corruption related charges, it will be someone in the bad books of government or someone who will have to be sacrificed for the sake of giving credibility to the so-called war against corruption.
Finally, corruption is part and parcel of the capitalist system which drives the Kenyan state. It can never be eradicated. While it can be reduced if some progressive member of the ruling class grabs power, ending corruption under a capitalist system is impossible. This does not just apply to Kenya. It applies to the whole world including the advanced capitalist countries across Europe. For this reason, the fight against corruption in Kenya will remain a distant mirage.
Kenya News World
