The Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi disclosed the other day that the government has requested the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to conduct a new corruption and governance diagnostic on key institutions in the country.
He said that the major institutions that drive the economy will all be investigated during the exercise, arguing that because the issue of corruption keeps coming back, only a thorough and comprehensive diagnostic can tell us where the biggest incidence of the scourge is domiciled within the public sector.
I am cynical about the value of the proposed governance audit and what it can achieve given the systemic nature of corruption in the public sector. Yet I believe that a comprehensive diagnostic conducted right now can be useful in terms of exposing and locating incidence and new trends.
When a problem like corruption is not discussed and addressed candidly, if it is not defined properly, and explained as being a result of human agency, the society starts to view graft in a fatalistic manner and as something normal.
If you want to see and locate new trends and appreciate the root cause of graft in this society, go no further than the revelations from the recent National Assembly impeachment proceedings of the Deputy President, Rigathi Gachagua.
What I found most revealing were the copies of pre-election agreements that Mr Gachagua published as he struggled to defend his famous theory that supports the blatant and jingoistic position that Kenya belongs to shareholders and that the tribes that voted for the current regime deserve to be allocated a bigger share of patronage resources.
If you asked me to name the biggest cause of corruption and bad governance in Kenya today, I would answer-without hesitation-it is patronage politics.
The Gachagua impeachment proceedings have once again brought to the surface the fact that what we call political parties in this country are mere structures of patronage organised by the elite of ethnic communities for the purposes of capturing State resources for themselves and members of their ethnic communities- the shareholders in Mr Gachagua’s lingo.
The impeachment proceedings and the revelations in the documents that were laid before Parliament by his accusers have reminded us that the reason corruption is rife in this society is because political elite seek leadership positions not to implement policies and programmes, but to be in positions where they can hand out jobs and contracts to their cronies and shareholders.
We are being reminded that appointments based on pacts and agreements signed in smoke-filled rooms between political leaders is the reason we have too much corruption and indiscipline in the public sector.
As a top public official, you approach your work as if you are only accountable to the political leader who gave you that job. Public appointments based on agreements between political parties and corrupt leaders is the reason the number of cases of unpunished corruption keep rising.
In reality, the Gachagua impeachment proceedings are basically a fight within Ali Baba’s cave. Patronage politics is why we-like the likes of Mr Gachagua – will only get enraged about new revelations about corruption when a perception is created that the elite from our ethnic group are being pushed out from the feeding trough when it is their turn to eat.
Which brings me to the state of our economy today. I remain optimistic about our economy because I see inmate strength- a strong private sector, high educational levels of the populace, and fairly good basic physical infrastructure. Our position as the economic hub of Eastern Africa is also a positive innate strength.
Indeed, this is an economy pegged on very strong work ethics of its people, it can run on autopilot. The thing inhibiting our economy from exploiting its full potential is corruption fuelled by bad politics.
What we have learnt from the Ghachagua saga is that when you organise politics around coalitions built around ethnic chieftains, the president will be permanently under pressure to expand the public sector because he has to accommodate the interests of the elites of all ethnic communities that supported him.
Corruption will only begin subsiding as we start gradually graduating from bad politics. Like former President Moi would say ‘siasa mbaya, maisha mbaya’.
