Kimunya’s exit from Treasury not enough to end graft

Published on 12/07/2008

By Barrack Muluka

The litmus test is on in earnest. Eventually, Mr Amos Kimunya quit the Ministry of Finance, despite his declamatory pronouncements in his Kipipiri backyard. Maybe it is true after all, that Kenya can never be the same again.

Perhaps President Kibaki’s inaugural words on December 2002 are finally coming alive. That the age of anything goes has come to an end. We might indeed be returning the culture of due process, accountability and transparency in public office. It is possible that Government will no longer be run on the whims of individuals.

For such was the thrust of President Kibaki’s inauguration speech, and whose wider relevance I shared with you in this column, last week.

Mr Alex Perry has written in this week’s Time Magazine: “If Africa is to be truly free, if – decades after throwing off colonial rule – it is now to escape poverty, corruption and autocracy, it needs a second, quiet revolution. The repression and electoral theft in Zimbabwe, the riots and civilian coup in Kenya in January, both suggest that the worst standards of governance persist.”

I see that Mr Perry is careful to introduce the adjective “quiet” before “revolution”. Something tells me that it was an afterthought.

He does not want to be accused of violent incitement. He plays it safe by urging Africa to embrace “quiet revolution”.

But social and political revolution is rarely quiet. It is often cataclysmic, bringing in its wake atrocious casualty.

It should please him to know that in our evolutionary style, Mr Kimunya has not only “asked the President to be allowed to step aside” but the President has also appointed a commission to inquire into the controversial sale of the Grand Regency Hotel. This is a “quiet revolution”, particularly seeing that Mr Kimunya had only a few hours ahead of “asking the President to be allowed to step aside” vowed that he would do no such thing, not even at the pain of death.

That he turned full circle and “asked to be allowed to step aside” is literally speaking a revolution.

Can commissions of enquiry nonetheless bring an end to the age of “ferocious dinosaurs” such as Mr Perry talks of in his commentary?

Numerous commissions

Kenya has had numerous commissions, which have yielded zero. Others have been discontinued midstream. What is the import of our commissions of enquiry? Are they at the very best safety values through which public tension is defused?

From the Mtongwe Ferry disaster in the 1990s, through various land and ethnic clashes enquiries all the way to devil worship, Goldenberg and sundry investigations, commissions of enquiry have failed the litmus test. They have, at the very best, only killed the pain of the moment.

Consider that when the Bosire Commission on Goldenberg was at work in 2003, some high-ranking Government officials would make pious pronouncements about themselves and wicked ones about others, in the morning.

In the afternoon, they would be in their Government offices, driving Anglo Leasing at the command of newly arrived Narc bosses. In point of fact, commissions of inquiry are corruption recruitment forums. It seems new graft players come through them.

When the report is complete, those who have not been part of the game now know “how it is done, where it is done and with whom.” The report is shelved.

When the next scandal rocks the country, you read of the same names from the past.

Would the latest commission not make more sense if its mandate was wider enough to look not just into the sale of Grand Regency Hotel, but – in fact – the goings on in the Ministry of Finance?

vote of no confidence

When Parliament passed a vote of no confidence in Mr Kimunya, the Grand Regency affair was only the last straw that broke the camel’s back. Parliament had a whole raft of accusations against Mr Kimunya. It would make sense to broaden the investigation. And is it fair that Mr Kimunya alone should “ask to be allowed to step aside.” Where are the people who allegedly worked with him?

Whether a “quiet revolution” is possible or not, depends so much on whether Mr Kimunya’s “stepping aside” and the inquiry will go beyond the borders of palliative window dressing.

It also depends on whether ODM names we are beginning to read of in the Press, like Immigration Minister Otieno Kajwang’ can also “ask to be allowed to step aside” to be investigated.

—The writer is a publishing editor and media consultant with Mvule Publishers.