Leaders, unlike flowers, don't blossom for a season on top of trees. Leaders have histories that need to be interrogated. Behaviour in public office now, and in the future, is more often than not a child of the past.
How a leader has consistently behaved in public or private office is a likely predictor of how they would behave in elective office. They have the motive. The office gives them the opportunity, and the wherewithal to plunder.
The notoriety begins with such leaders bribing their way into clearance to run for office. They bungle party nominations and then compromise gullible voters to cement bonds that blind.
This familiar path sidelines people of good repute. Integrity and competence are overlooked as suspects, who share proceeds of impunity with their victims, sneak in.
Wolves won't be sheep even if they wear sheepskins. The polity has no precedent of Saul transforming into Paul, without insidious influences from the past.
Director of Public Prosecutions Noordin Haji and presidential aspirant Kalonzo Musyoka are right: People with questionable records should not be cleared to run for public office.
Public perception is a good enough threshold, rather than the assumption of innocence until the suspect is proved guilty. Innocence can be bought; guilt can be planted in a reproachable justice system.
Yet, too often, the gullible voters have entrusted hyenas with the management of beef stores. The people share the blame because corruption is a top-down and a bottom-up assault on national morality.
Chapter Six of the 2010 Constitution defines the expectations of public office. The Supreme law also defines eligibility for such offices: People who run for public office should demonstrate respect for the electorate. They should bring honour and dignity to public office. They should promote public confidence in the integrity of the office.
Such leaders should be elected, freely and fairly, on account of personal integrity, competence and suitability. Anything less is contempt for the electorate.
The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, which Haji leads, is among the agencies that clear aspirants for elective office. But the ODPP, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission and the Directorate of Criminal Investigations have often given free passes to suspects.
Kalonzo suggests compulsory lifestyle audits for people aspiring for public office. He also promises to establish the office of the protector of public interest to complement the EACC in the wobbling fight against corruption.
You may accuse Kalonzo of anything else, but he is among the few top leaders without a cloud of suspicions hanging over them. Kalonzo is one of two presidential aspirants with a clear statement on fighting corruption.
He and Raila Odinga are the only presidential aspirants who have made the fight against corruption their campaign plunk. They know corruption is an eyesore that others deliberately ignore.
On the eve of the 2007 general election, Raila, then the ODM presidential candidate, said his administration would prosecute perpetrators of corruption, and repossess proceeds of impunity.
The anti-corruption platform gained clarity on the day the Kroll Report, an encyclopaedic account of the Nyayo era's corruption, was published in the local press.
But the temperate claimed it was not strategic to show a knife to a bull picked for slaughter. This line of thinking was still alive last month when Raila made a similar statement.
The so-called economic growth models, like the long-discredited bottom-up or middle-out, are diversionary. The country urgently needs a viable anti-corruption model to tame greed: Tame the top because fish begins to rot from the head.
