Less than 100 days to the Presidential election Transparency International’s flagship Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) for 2007 has been published. Kenya’s score of 2.1 out of 10 (rank 150 out of 180) would be classified by Transparency International as indicating rampant corruption within the Government of Kenya. Not for the first time Kenya is the lowest ranked East African Community country, but what will shock some is that Kenya is for the first time lower ranked than Nigeria and apparently as badly regarded as Zimbabwe. Unusually, the local Transparency International chapter is not making a big fuss about the CPI 2007 results, which consequently hasn’t received its usual headline treatment by the Kenyan press. For what it’s worth the Government Spokesman is silent on Kenya’s poor ranking.
I say unusual because the timing of the CPI could not be worse for Kibaki and certainly worsens his re-election prospects. It amounts to the final deathblow to any anti-corruption credentials his government ever possessed following so closely on the heels of the leaking of the Kroll Report to the whistleblower website www.wikileaks.org and the chronicling of the accumulation of over USD 2 Billion by associates and relatives of his predecessor Daniel Arap Moi hidden in 28 countries around the world by leading western media.
While the President’s re-election team is in disarray his only credible opponent Raila Odinga of the Orange Democratic Movement mentions the Kroll Report and rails against the looters of Kenya at every opportunity. Observers note the complete silence from the President’s camp. It doesn’t help either that ex-President Daniel Arap Moi, is regularly seen on television lecturing bemused audiences about the dangers of investigating past economic crimes and energetically campaigning for Kibaki’s re-election.
Make no mistake Kibaki was once a hero of the anti-corruption movement. He was expected by everyone (the majority of Kenyans, TI, World Bank, IMF, and Bi-Lateral donors) to lead Kenya away from the well-trodden path of grand corruption taken by his two predecessors, Kenyatta and Arap Moi, and in his first year he did not disappoint. His then Minister for Justice Kiraitu Murungi was a global star (at least for a moment) for his radical purge of the Judiciary and his incandescent speeches such as “Corruption is a Crime against Humanity.”
But eventually after the NARC euphoria wore off, sleaze engulfed the Kibaki administration and over the last three years destroyed his anti-corruption reputation. Today many believe that sleaze is what will destroy Kibaki’s second-term ambitions. Since 2005 when John Githongo his anti-graft advisor finally threw in the towel, resigned and fled into exile in the United Kingdom in fear of his life, Kibaki’s anti-corruption reputation evaporated to nothing, first locally and now internationally.
The perception that grand corruption never really went away, has gradually metamorphosised into a fixed reality. Too many Kenyans are now familiar with the many scandals, about which nothing has been done, to buy the argument that the CPI is unreliable because it measures perceptions. The list of shame of real (not perceived) economic crimes about which no-one seriously expects Kibaki to do anything, runs into the billions of dollars, and includes Ken Ren Fertiliser, Goldenberg, Anglo Leasing, Charter House, Mobitelea, Pending Bills and the drain on the exchequer called the Kenya Anti Corruption Commission.
But what an irony it is that Transparency International’s global corruption perceptions index may serve to condemn a man who the organization lionized in 2003.
Who would have thought that Kibaki would be 100 days away from the political battle of his life completely unable to even utter the word ‘corruption’ in his campaign speeches to the country?
Mwalimu Mati
Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index 2007
