E-Clips:- Business Pictorial - Government Has Failed The Test In Anglo Leasing Case

The decision on Friday by the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission to close the investigation into the possible involvement of Energy minister Kiraitu Murungi in an attempt to cover up the Anglo Leasing scandal raises troubling possibilities.

Some of the reasons KACC relied on to close the file — that former Ethics PS John Githongo refused to record a formal statement and witnesses denied some of his allegations — are not terminal. They are surmountable technicalities and form a very strange basis for closing a serious investigation.

The management of the entire security procurement scandal and investigations into it has been most disappointing. Kenyans were looking to President Kibaki to keep his promise on corruption by making it amply clear through decisive action that he and his entire government are politically accountable.

Kenyans also expected the Kibaki government to manifest some differences with the irredeemable regime it succeeded. They were, it would appear, unrealistically optimistic in that expectation.

Vice-President Moody Awori continues to act as second-in-command irrespective of the serious questions raised by Parliament about his conduct with regard to the passports scandal.

In his public pronouncements, it would also appear that he fully expects to run alongside the President for re-election later in the year.

This is the level of hubris that Kenyans have come to expect from leaders who are yet to realise that public money actually has to come from someone’s pocket and that they are not a law unto themselves.

The so-called businessmen who have quietly been fleecing Kenya of billions of shillings in crooked contracting in collusion with figures in government and ferreting their fortunes to foreign accounts are getting on with their wealthy lifestyles, totally uninconvenienced.

They are quite likely patiently bidding their time to resume their bleeding of the Kenyan nation, if they already haven’t. Millions of shillings have spent on investigations over the last two years, and for what? There hasn’t been a single Anglo Leasing-related conviction.

There is only one conclusion that can be arrived at, that the government’s feeble efforts at fighting corruption have largely been ineffectual, inconclusive and quite unsuccessful.

The nation continues to be hostage to a circle of politicians and their corrupt business side-kicks, a frightening condition that not even an election — which will put in office this or a different segment of the circle — can cure.

Whereas there is little point in calling for action on Anglo Leasing, certain facts related to high-level corruption require to be placed on the record.

A minimum Sh18 billion was stolen and squandered in the Goldenberg scandal whose are known and who are believed to enjoy the patronage of certain personalities with influence. The government has failed in its promise to present these persons to the courts of law and to ensure that they are punished and the money they stole recovered.

Secondly, the Narc government was involved in fraudulent contracting, putting at as much as Sh50 billion shillings. When this fraud was discovered, about Sh1 billion was refunded and a few civil servants hustled. But the perpetrators of this crime, both within the system and in other corruption circles, are free and in all likelihood well-protected.

Thirdly, and finally, in these circumstances it would far better for the government to drop all pretence of attempting to live up to the promises it made at the last election.

The pretence makes this record of dismal failure all the more difficult to bear.