In the Kenyan case we badly needed
Kibaki to see his dream come true and
as we have witnessed his infrastructure
dream in the wrong hands has become a
corruption cesspit where projects are used
to fleece the country by astounding cost
escalation.
Inadvertently Kibaki created the perfect
document for a gangster paradise.
The gangsters are public servants and
politicians who have found the document
godsend to enable them silently divert
national resources into their pockets.
We are doubly unfortunate in that the
Kibaki era also ushered in the new
constitution that was supposed to cure
all the ills that had stymied our noble
country’s progress. The current push to
amend the document is testimony that we
failed miserably.
For those who remember, the issue twenty
years ago, during the time that was to later
be referred to as the second liberation, the
reasons that the government was broke
was because of a bloated bureaucracy that
gobbled all the resources and left little for
development.
In comes a new constitution, crafted
by lawyers who had no clue how a
government is run and funded and they
created a catastrophic financial nightmare
where they managed to multiply the
bureaucracy by forty seven and proudly
presented the document.
They also ensured that the heads of
these economically unviable units called
counties were headed by individuals
who were practically independent and
were hard to supervise by the national
government and were a law unto
themselves. This was all done in the name
of devolution and getting government
services to the grassroots. The net result
is that the constitution creates forty eight
presidents all competing for an allocation
of the scarce funds at the treasury. The
taxman had his work cut out.
The constitution did however create a new
set of thieves. All the positions created by
the new constitution seem to be very good
at allowing the unscrupulous to dip their
fingers into the national coffers and help
themselves at Wanjiku’s expense.
Since development is a sine qua non
of a government, Kenya has resorted
to borrowing excessively to finance its
development agenda. In it we also espy
ego issues where one’s legacy is measured
by the huge public works he will leave
behind.
There is now a real national concern about
the insatiable appetite for loans by the
government and the worrisome trend that
the Chinese have put into place of taking
over critical facilities of a country that is
unable to service its loans.
The concern is more pronounced when we
realize that the money is being borrowed
only to be stolen by the many schemes that
our over-bloated bureaucracy is brewing.
Here is a country at war with itself and
hell-bent on self-destructing.
So when in a recent national prayer
meeting
the
current
US
envoy,
McCarter broke diplomatic protocol
and sarcastically noted that our national
leaders were praying for the sins that they
have committed against the Wananchi, he
was spot on.
As galling as it is to have to be reminded by
a foreigner that our house is not in order
and that there is a disconnect between
what the leaders are saying and what they
are doing, it is however an apt moment
for us to stop and reflect on ‘which way
Kenya?’
The fight against corruption must not
become a public relation stunt where
a never ending circus of arrests, court
appearances and dismissal of cases become
the norm. Kenya is not an Afro-cinema
soap where we await the next episode just
for entertainment. A legacy is not made by
what you say, but rather, by what you do!