Though there are a hundred reasons why Kenyans want to see corruption dragon slayed and buried, there are also many reasons why Parliament, among other institutions, has found it difficult to fight and end it.
One reason why I fought and joined Parliament at the tender age of 30 was to fight corruption. As JM Kariuki had said — before he was brutally assassinated by allies of corruption — Kenya had become a nation of 10 millionaires and 10 million
beggars. Fast-forward to today, we would say corruption has created 40 trillionaires and 40 million beggars
Although there is a public outcry against graft, there is also a definite feeling that many in government are not truly committed to its elimination. Nevertheless, it was shocking to read in the newspapers that corruption was “set free” in cases of Ruaraka land scandal and the Sugar report merely because MPs had allegedly taken bribes or refused to condemn graft that was perpetrated by fellow members of same party or ethnic community. But there were other reasons why MPs could simply not condemn graft.
To begin with, many MPs were corrupt long before they joined Parliament since Chapter Six of the Constitution, which would have barred them from vying, was set aside, allowing them to join the House and continue being corrupt which was now second nature to them.
It is almost needless to say that corrupt MPs can only use myriad parliamentary privileges to perpetrate more corruption and protect themselves and others against prosecution.
Indeed, corrupt MPs do not just use Parliament to protect corruption. They also use it to promote and perpetuate it with total impunity through legislation.
Tragically, corruption is not new in Parliament. In many parliaments, legislators have benefited from the protection of the corrupt, whom they should supposedly be investigating. MPs have also taken bribes to vote in a particular manner in the House.
Once, a chair of the Public Accounts Committee told members that if they did not benefit from their protection of corrupt persons they were investigating, they would never become rich. The tragedy of this corrupt practice is that committee members were not just bribed by corrupt businessmen and women but also by the government, in instances it sought to influence their voting in Parliament.
Often, it made MPs shed tears when they saw fellow MPs mobilised to kill reports of Public Investment Committee and Public Accounts Committee that had incontrovertible evidence of corruption by civil servants and parastatals employees, as well as private companies that stole huge sums of money from the government. As expected, these individuals are not prosecuted because reports implicating them are killed on the floor of the House.
But MPs do not just engage in protecting corruption. They steal from government by making false mileage claims and are never punished. I remember once when almost all MPs and Cabinet ministers were found guilty of making false mileage claims but were pardoned by President Daniel Moi because their prosecution would have collapsed his government.
But guilty as MPs are of corruption, the government is guiltier of refusing to prosecute cases the Controller of Budget and the Auditor General expose every year in their reports, which it never takes up, neither do constitutional anti-corruption agencies for further investigation and execution.
Corruption is left to grow to be the monster that it is
today
not for lack of evidence against it or means to fight it, but because government, Parliament and the Judiciary have no moral will or ideological reason to fight and eliminate it. Here, corruption and leaders are not enemies. They are bedfellows and allies that protect each other.