Tag Archives: Corruption

those opposed to the creation of an unrepresentative senate have a point

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The Kenyan Draft Constitution seems to have hit a snag. A section of parliamentarians are opposed to the section of the proposed constitution that gives all counties equal powers via their elected senators. I agree with them. The to-be-formed senate, as currently constituted, grants too much power to sparsely populated counties. Theoretically, this should not make any difference because people could just move to better served, over-represented counties thereby balancing everything. But we all know that this does not happen in Kenya. The country remains divided into various “ethnic homelands” that are more often than not inhabited exclusively by a single ethnic group.

I hold the opinion that part of the reason why we currently have a corrupt and unresponsive political class is that those who actually pay taxes – and therefore feel the pinch of mismanagement of public funds – are grossly under-represented. For instance, Nairobi only has eight members of parliament even though it generates a huge chunk of Kenya’s tax revenue. Let us not worsen this by creating an even more powerful senate whose members will bribe their way into office with a few bags of sugar and flour per voter and then proceed to steal millions of urban Kenyans’ hard earned cash. I am not advocating for an urban-biased senate. What I am saying is that the constitution should, at a minimum, respect the principle of equal representation. Nairobians and other Kenyan urbanites should make it clear that they are not into the idea of taxation without equal representation.

The alternative would be to have independent incorporate urban districts that elect their own governments and have greater control over the collection and expenditure of their tax revenue. I don’t particularly like this idea though because places like Suba and Maragua still need Nairobi, Eldoret, Kisumu, Nyeri,Mombasa and others, to pull them up.

That is my peni nane opinion on this.

corruption in South Africa

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South African democracy still has a long way to go. My greatest fear is that ANC supremacy might get into the heads of the party bosses and have them collapse the distinction between party and state. There are already allegations of corruption within the top ranks of the ANC. Ironically, if corruption is to be tackled head on within the ANC, Jacob Zuma is the right man for the job, his own failings notwithstanding. He seems to have a direct connection with average ANC supporters and could use this to rein in party bosses, or at least make them steal less.

It is hard being a disciplined hegemonic party. Tanzania’s CCM is a lesson in what the ANC should avoid. Botswana’s BDP might be a better example of a relatively disciplined hegemonic party. The party has ruled Botswana since 1966 without falling into the temptations of grand corruption and power grabbing.

Edit: Recent events have shown cracks beginning to form within the BDP. The world is watching what Ian Khama, son of Seretse Khama is prepared to do to secure his presidency in the face of increasing opposition.

KENYAN MPS TO GET PAY HIKE

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Can someone please tell me how these guys sleep at night given that they run a country with the following stats?????

Infant mortality: 54.7 deaths/1,000 live births

Life expectancy: 58 years

Female literacy rate: 80%

Urban population (crude measure of peasantry rate and level of industrialization): 22% of total population (2008)

PER CAPITA GDP: $ 1,600

kibaki should not waste this opportunity to punish corruption

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The Kenyan Education Minister Prof. Sam Ongeri is not among the big fish in Kenyan politics. Neither are his assistant and the Ministry’s permanent secretary. Firing them and making them face the law will not have any awful political consequences for the president and his non-existent party. But it will serve Kenya. I think that this is a wonderful opportunity for the president to demonstrate that there are sacred programs that should never be compromised with – like the free primary education program, or healthcare.

Several months ago I thought that the president and his premier would punish those who stole government maize for re-export even as Kenyans starved to death. No one has been punished yet. Word on the street is that bigwigs in the Agriculture Ministry and perhaps even the premier’s son were deeply involved, plus a number of MPs. Now almost SHS 200 million has disappeared from the Ministry of Education. This is money that was intended to finance free primary education. Kibaki cannot afford to turn a blind eye to this.

In other news, the UN wants Guinean dictator Capt. Moussa Camara (and his henchmen) to be tried for crimes against humanity following the massacre of over 150 protestors in late September. Mr. Camara is currently recovering in a Moroccan hospital following a botched assassination attempt. The attempt on his life is believed to be a result of infighting within the junta over who should take responsibility for the September massacre.

Elsewhere, the president of Nigeria continues to rule in absentia. President Umaru Yar’Adua has been ailing in a Saudi hospital for a while now, prompting calls for his resignation. Nigerian politics aside, I echo these same calls. Nigeria is the undisputed leading country in West Africa. The chaos in Guinea and to a lesser extent in Guinea-Bissau and the Ivory Coast require mediation and regional engagement. Nigeria can provide leadership on this front, plus it can send troops (to Guinea especially) to keep the peace. The region needs Nigerian leadership (yes, I know I just said that). And that means having a strong and engaged Nigerian president.

Kenyan insanity

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How is this even imaginable in a country where millions are faced with starvation and an annual income per capita of under $ 2000???

The Kenyan political class should be ashamed of itself.

my two cents on the new constitution

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What I liked:

  • The bicameral parliament. It is expensive but will serve to give the regions a voice.
  • The regional governments. Great idea, but how are they going to be funded? I would have loved it if there was a provision that each region should generate enough revenue to fund a fixed percentage of its budget. This way the regional governments can have incentives to promote economic activity in their regions. Better yet the central government should have been mandated to only issue matching grants to these regions – to spur competition among them for funds for such sectors as education, healthcare, infrastructure development, etc
  • Retention of the Kadhis courts. I am glad that sanity prevailed on this one. Kenyan Christians were being absolutely crazy in their opposition to this.

What I did not like:

  • The judiciary. Judges of the Supreme Court should have had life tenure. They should have created regional court systems. And they should have done away with the “traditional” court systems – whatever they are?
  • Traditional marriages should have been trashed. Marriage should be between two people. Polygamy is an affront on women’s rights. Period.
  • And about gay marriage, I don’t think it was necessary to spell out that marriage is between a man and a woman. These guys should have been open minded enough to allow for the possibility of Kenyans being more liberal than they currently are.
  • Vote share for Nairobi in the Senate. Nairobi should have had one of the biggest shares of Senate votes – by virtue of it being the economic hub. Instead the Rift Valley, with its many underdeveloped counties, has the largest share. Call it urban bias, but I don’t like the idea of rural non-tax-payers always having the biggest say on who gets to steal the money paid in taxes by Nairobians and other city dwellers.
  • The lack for autonomy of towns and cities. The counties idea is great, but we should have designated cities and towns that were autonomous  – with their own police forces and stuff. Security and Justice are political and should have been devolved too.

And in other news, Kenya is still among the most corrupt countries in the world. The new TI corruption perception index ranks Kenya at 146 out of 180 states. This is one more reason to fire Amos Wako, Kenya’s Attorney general since forever. And while we are at it we should also get rid of the Chief Justice. Mr. Gicheru has not lived up to expectations. He was appointed to clean up the judiciary but ended up in the pockets of the powers that be.

obscene, utterly obscene

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Stories like this drive me crazy.

Quoting the Guardian Newspaper:

“Little Teodoro, as President Teodoro Obiang Nguema’s son is known at home, appears to spend as little time as possible fulfilling his duties as the minister of agriculture and forestry in the west African state. Instead he flits between South Africa, France and the US, pursuing business ventures such as a failed rap label while acquiring property and a fleet of Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Bentleys – all made possible by the discovery of oil in Equatorial Guinea’s waters a decade ago.”

further ahead…..

“President Obiang, who has ruled since seizing power in 1979, has decreed that the management of his country’s $3bn a year in oil revenues is a state secret.”

According to the CIA factbook:

Per capita GDP of Equatorial Guinea (PPP) is 37,300. Obiang (the elder) spends a paltry 0.6% of his country’s GDP on education. Almost two thirds of the country’s 633,400 people live below the poverty line. Meanwhile, Obiang – whose kleptocratic leadership has plagued Equatorians since he staged a coup against his own uncle (and then executed him) in 1979 – managed to win a seven year term in 2002 with over 97% of the vote. The next elections will be held in 2010.

TOTAL INSANITY.

ringera calls it quits

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I just watched a clip on the Nation’s website showing the press conference at which outgoing director of the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission, retired judge Ringera announced his departure from Integrity Centre. I don’t understand exactly why it took him so long to see the sense in doing this.The clip also hinted at rumors that Ringera may get a job in the judiciary. I hope not. He was ineffectual at KACC. He earned 2 million shillings a month and delivered nothing for Wanjiku. Public service, and the emoluments that come with it, is not the right of a select group of Kenyans. We should not keep recycling the same names. And this is not restricted to just the high profile national offices. We transfer ineffectual DCs, PPOs, directors and chiefs all the time. No wonder the more we try to implement change the more things stay the same.

As Ringera left he made some very useful suggestions on how parliament can strengthen the KACC. May be we should award his courage in resigning by implementing some of these ideas.

And on a sort of related topic, I wish Annan and Ocampo would stop issuing threats. Just give us the names. Let us know who is suspected of having done what in last year’s post poll violence. These leaders need to be named and shamed instead of being given more time to continue mis-shaping Kenya’s destiny.

Omar Bongo is dead

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Omar Bongo, the president of Gabon and Africa’s longest serving ruler has died. Mr. Bongo had intestinal cancer and had gone to Barcelona, Spain for treatment. He took over power in 1967.

The African state of 1.5 million has considerable oil reserves, timber and manganese deposits and enjoys a per capita income of a middle income country – at US $14,400 according to the CIA Factbook. But due to a high level of income inequality, hundreds of thousands of Gabonese still live in poverty. Gabon was ranked 116th on the 2007/2008 UNDP Human Development Report. Like most mineral-rich African countries, corruption is endemic in Gabon. For instance, earlier this year anti-corruption activists accused president Bongo of buying French property with proceeds from corruption.

According to the constitution of Gabon, the head of the country’s senate will be the interim president until elections are held within 90 days.

is it time we had fresh elections?

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So the weekend retreat in Tsavo of the big-wigs in Kenya’s coalition government failed. Instead of addressing real issues (reforms, corruption and Kenya’s land problem), the discussions veered into side-shows – like the Premier’s salary and the opening remarks of the president and his prime minister.

I am beginning to think that the coalition government has outlived its purpose. I am beginning to be persuaded by those who have been calling for fresh elections – most notably the clergy. The coalition government, as currently constituted, is dysfunctional at best. The prime minister and the president (and their respective camps) seem to be pulling in opposite directions on just about every issue. May be it’s time we went to the polls and gave a mandate to a single party instead of having the collective tyranny of ODM and PNU. I think we have a better chance with just one of these parties in power. May be then the government can act more responsibly on reforms instead of having cabinet ministers constantly pointing fingers at each other and blaming the other party.

On a different note, I hear rumours that Martha Karua might quit the government if she is not given more space in the Justice ministry. I hope she gets what she wants, i.e. more space to implement her brand of reforms in the judiciary. Hate her or love her, I think Martha Karua is one of the few Kenyan leaders who speak their mind and who have the balls to implement what they believe in. I remember reading somewhere that the problem with African politics is the lack of ideology. Many leaders act like blind men in the dark, constantly wandering around without any direction.

African social organization and politics have mostly been driven by contingency rather than ideology. The only country that ever produced a true ideologue on the continent was Tanzania. And for all its faults, Ujamaa helped Tanzania a great deal. God knows where the country would be had it not been for the commodity crises of the seventies and mandated structural adjustment programs of the eighties (yeah Gordon Brown, down with the Washington Consensus). I think Martha Karua may be Kenya’s real ideologue, and for that she is increasingly becoming one of my favorite politicians, even though she and I may not see eye to eye on her actual policies.

scandals in Kenya: can we please have some big names behind bars??

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Right now Kenya seems like the most corrupt place on the planet (sort of a hyperbole, but it’s close to that). There is the running scandal of the sale of the  Grand Regency Hotel , there is that involving cheap imported maize, there is the one with the Kenya Tourism Board and then there is the giant one involving Triton and the Kenya Pipeline Company – and of course many smaller ones that never make it to the national news.

I am quite frankly disappointed by the coalition government. These old men running our country seem to have no idea of what it means for people to have trust in their government. There has to be less embarrassing ways to steal from poor people! There has to be smarter ways! That these thieves choose to steal in broad daylight and so shamelessly means that they have nothing but contempt for the average Kenyans. And for that they deserve punishment. Someone needs to be jailed for life – without parole. And they should pay heavy fines too. We must make corruption as expensive to the corrupt as it can get.

The current saga has got me thinking. May be the Kenyan model of mass movement of the 1990s has failed. Kibaki and Raila are both mass movement leaders but they are failing Kenyans almost in the same way that Moi did. May we should try a bourgeois liberation movement. May be if the middle and upper classes get politically active enough our leaders will listen to them. Because as it is it is so easy for Nairobi to dupe the millions of Kenyans who live in the rural areas and the slums in the major cities. Kibera, Mukuru, Kangemi and others prove this fact. But I don’t think that the Kenyan middle class would be so easily duped. The problem is that as a political constituency they lack the numbers and the courage. Many would rather spend their time in the many hypermarkets around town than to agitate for real change. Some might even owe their status to the corrupt ruling class.

As yet Kenya does not have leaders from the middle class – or the upper class for that matter. The little men who parade as gods around the country do not have any affiliations to any given class. It is no wonder that they usually just fight for their selfish interests. They have never been middle or upper class (not in wealth, but in their thinking) and they are in more than a rush to discard their humble roots (invariably by stealing from the public). They do not care much for the middle class, and they keep duping the vast majority of poor Kenyans (by playing on ethnicity). May be we need class conscious movements (nothing Marxist, just classist) to articulate the interests of various classes. May be then we shall have stable political parties that are based on ideas and not fleeting personalities and ethnic alliances.

The most frustrating thing about all this – African politics in general and the Kenyan corruption scandals in particular – is that our leaders seem completely oblivious. In some other place the minister in charge of the KPC would have resigned already. Just a few weeks ago the Belgian government resigned because of a scandal in the financial sector. I am not advocating for a government resignation. I just hope that someone high up there gets to pay for his mistakes. That’s all.