E-Clips:- Business Pictorial - Are We Back In The Old Bad Days?

Is official corruption taking root in the Narc Government? The Sh2.7 billion mentioned in the passport scandal that is still unravelling is loose change compared to the Goldenberg scam and other instances of grand corruption in the Moi era.

But we have been assured time and time again that the Kibaki Government is serious in its zero-tolerance attitude towards corruption. The President has also issued constant assurances that the war against corruption starts from the top.

Is it all rhetoric? A quick perusal of the passport scam would suggest so. In a nutshell, the Immigration Department, housed in the Office of the Vice-President and Minister for Home Affairs Moody Awori, decides to modernise its passport-issuing mechanisms.

It goes through the process and pre-qualifies three reputable international firms to bid for the project estimated to cost a relatively modest Sh800 million. Immigration forwards its proposals to the Treasury for approval, and that is where the ball-game changes.

The Treasury, under Finance Minister David Mwiraria and Permanent Secretary Joseph Magari, first question the credibility of the three firms.

Then it imposes on the Immigration Department a much larger project costing Sh2.7 billion. It goes ahead, with no competitive bidding, to select an obscure London-based firm of no fixed abode and absolutely no track record to speak of, to carry out the project.

All that is done in utter violation of Government procurement procedures. When Principal Immigration Officer Henry ole Ndiema protests that he has no budget for the expanded project, that it was outside his departments requirements and that the system being foisted on him had not been installed anywhere else in the world, he is given short thrift. Terms like "security" and "terrorism", those catch-all phrases used by rogue Governments to justify opacity in financial matters, are brought liberally into play.

Security and the war against terrorism are not the purview of the Treasury except in providing funds, but fall under the docket of the Minister of State in charge of Provincial Administration and National Security, Dr Chris Murungaru.

More interesting is the number of names floating around in connection with the passport deal. There is a well-known wheeler-dealer from the Moi regime who now seems to have insinuated himself into the Kibaki Government as a kind of freelance Mr Fixit.

Although a private citizen, he has close links to somebody at the Treasury and is reported to have been traversing European capitals soliciting a financing package for the passport project.

Also being mentioned are a few other private citizens who boast close links to the Kibaki State House, and are not averse to dropping big names to advance their business interests.

This is one for President Kibaki to tackle, for fellows who boast State House connections to pull corrupt deals are soiling his name. And powerful public servants who aid and abet corrupt deals are directly subverting the presidency, for the buck ultimately stops on his desk.

Our closest approximation of an anti-corruption czar, Governance and Ethics PS John Githongo who reports directly to the President, has ordered investigations into the murky affair. But he could come up against a brick wall in the form of vested interests at the Treasury, Harambee House and State House who wield more political clout.

Unless he gets an unfettered hand from the President on this one. And this is the one that might define whether the Kibaki regime much touted war against corruption is being fought with no compromises.

Perceptions are setting in that that there has been an over-emphasis on tackling Moi era corruption, while latter-day thieves are getting away with a nudge and a wink.

Kenyans did not vote in the Narc Government merely to exchange one set of thieves for another. In my view, coming down hard on emerging crooks is far more important than dwelling on misdeeds of the Moi era.

We must never forget that President Moi came to power as an anti-corruption crusader. One of his most famous early homilies went something to the effect that one can lie on a golden bed, but that would not buy sound sleep. Along the way, however, Moi and those around him concluded that politically, they were up against Kenyatta-era robber-barons who controlled immense wealth; the ones who dismissed him as a passing cloud.

Hence the conscious policy decision to match that wealth; and the primitive accumulation that left the State coffers dry. God forbid that we should go back to that sort of thinking