It's best to agree corruption is phantom that only exists in imagination

President Uhuru Kenyatta at the State House Summit on Governance, Anti-Corruption and Accountability at State House in Nairobi on October 18, 2016. PHOTO | EVANS HABIL | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • How come opposition parties have not appointed their own prosecutors and built jails where they can detain people who have been robbing the public blind in counties they control?

  • All the talk about corruption has been a political stick used to beat up the Jubilee government, with no evidence, and therefore no charges and zero convictions.

Beautiful light-skinned women and tall, dark, handsome men are not supposed to be torn to shreds by bullets from a firing squad because of petty corruption politics.

Prodigious violence of this variety goes against the Constitution unless it is employed in silencing tweeps like Jacob Juma, loudmouths and other ordinary gangsters.

The President has fired people. He has disbanded the anti-corruption commission; and the new chairperson of the Ethics and Anti-corruption Commission has been replaced within seven months of taking office this year. The President has created new laws, convened multi-sectoral agency meetings and signed everything that needed signing as advised but still, people want to talk about the Sh1.8 billion National Youth Service heist; and the Sh250 billion Eurobond scandal.

He wants to hire judges who can jail suspects instantly, then someone reminds him that he has no power to do so; he wants to fire the same slow judges, then he is asked if anyone has sent him a petition. Sacking and appointing people is the only way to fight corruption, and the Constitution has bound the President hand and foot. The damn Constitution has taken away all the power to do anything while giving the President responsibility to guarantee the nation’s security and promote and protect everyone’s human rights.

Uhuru Kenyatta would gladly offer himself and the Inspector-General of Police for arrest and prosecution for involvement in corruption, but that self-same Constitution says that “criminal proceedings shall not be instituted or continued against the President during his term for anything that he does or does not do in the discharge of his duties”.

THE CONSTITUTION

Even with a military sword and the other instruments of power in Mr Kenyatta’s possession, people are still running corruption rings around him because of the Constitution of Kenya, 2010. Despite the legal hurdles, the President has fought corruption frontally by sacking people who are innocent, and removing the anti-corruption commission from office. This week, he bared his heart to the country about his erstwhile friends, “They hate me; they campaign against me; and blame me,” he told a State House summit on accountability.

With nothing left for the President to do on corruption, it is best to agree as a country that it is a phantom that only exists in the most fertile of imaginations. Corruption has become a political circus employed to beat up the Jubilee administration. If that were not the case, how come the opposition political parties have not appointed their own prosecutors and built jails where they can detain people who have been robbing the public blind in counties they control?

All the talk about corruption has been a political stick used to beat up the Jubilee government, with no evidence, and therefore no charges and zero convictions.

STOLEN MONEY

The Auditor-General has been saying Eurobond money was stolen when, in fact, it cannot be stolen. He insists on nonsensical investigations instead of believing what honest people at the Treasury are telling him, and now demands junkets to New York on nonsense investigations that would require questioning officials of the US Federal Reserve Bank. No wonder the National Assembly has been passing laws to reduce his powers.

He is an exemplar of the completely unserious people who only seek to attract newspaper attention by threatening to turn the next Eurobond into a bad debt.

The media must not agree to be used to further conversations on corruption. They must demand incontrovertible evidence before publishing any claims of corruption. These are people who are joking with life; playing with Kenyans, and the way to put them in their place is to occupy them with the guarding of their fowls by unleashing 7,000 chicken thieves from prison.

Someone pass a double of the President’s favourite tipple.