E-Clips:- Business Pictorial - Scandal-Tainted Ministers Must Resign

When President Mwai Kibaki delivered his inaugural speech before an ecstatic crowd in the capital on December 30, 2002, few pledges he made resonated more with Kenyans than his firm promise that his would be a government guided by what he termed as zero-tolerance to corruption.

The enthusiasm of his audience was not misplaced. The Presidents speech on that day was a condemnation of innumerable examples of monumental acts of graft in preceding decades whose crippling residual effects are still being felt by Kenyan taxpayers.

The President, to be fair, followed up his words with a number of tangible actions. He raided the private sector to pick an anti-graft crusader with a commendable track record and created an office for him at — of all places — State House. Every subsequent speech in Kibakis early months in office repeated the claim that his government would pursue an unprecedented muscular approach in ridding the nation of the spectre of grand corruption that is to blame for Kenyas tottering economy.

All that now belongs in the past. Events of recent weeks have not only put the lie to the notion that this is a government that has the capacity to win the fight against corruption, they have, in our view, irreparably damaged its very claim to having any will to pay the price of ridding this country of the vice.

Rather sadly, the President appears to have resigned to this view. Keen observers will have noticed that his address to the nation on Madaraka Day did not mention his governments efforts to win the war on corruption. That was a startling omission.

International donors, who in the first few months of the Narc administration were literally clamouring to commit aid to the new administrations programmes have silently retreated to their watch posts.

And the public that made a resounding statement against the impunity and pervasive graft of the previous regime by throwing it out on December 27, 2002, is feeling betrayed and disillusioned.

The passports scandal and, more recently, the inflated award of a tender to construct a forensic laboratory for the Criminal Investigations Department — which was first exposed by this newspaper — are only the most visible examples of the flagrant abuse of office by this government. And there is more.

Yet the explanation given to Parliament last week by Finance Minister David Mwiraria to the effect that the shadowy company at the heart of the scams has refunded the money is patently inadequate and unacceptable. The return of grand corruption cannot be wished away by patently flimsy explanations or glossed over like that.

It beggars belief that a government can resort to honouring or awarding contracts to underworld firms closely tied to its officials and expect the matter to be laid to rest by puerile explanations such as that the projects have been "cancelled".

It seems that those in power do not understand that the import of the change in leadership that came with the last polls was to put an end to the age of impunity.

The Controller and Auditor-Generals report on the passports scandal left little doubt that the scam was perpetrated with the active connivance of top Kenya government officials.

The National Security minister Chris Murungarus denial, on the record, in an interview with this newspaper on the issue of the forensic laboratory contract has been exposed as a sham by the budgetary provisions for it two weeks ago and the admission by his counterpart in Finance.

He should resign.

Besides, his Permanent Secretary, Mr Dave Mwangi, and Finance Minister Mwiraria have no business clinging on to their jobs. They must step aside now to facilitate a bigger inquiry into the goings on in the security docket, which they have presided over with cultic secrecy.

It is the political price that must be paid if the Narc administration is to retain any shred of credibility.

Nothing less will suffice.