President Kenyatta cannot run away from who he is

President Uhuru Kenyatta at State House in Nairobi on October 18, 2016. PHOTO | SAMUEL MIRING'U | PSCU

What you need to know:

  • You can use power to run away from the International Criminal Court.

  • How do you run away from your history, your name and your own shadow?

I agree with President Uhuru Kenyatta that the fight against corruption is frustrating and that he is helpless to do anything about it. But I disagree that the problem is what he or other people have done or not done. The problem is who he is and the foundation of his administration.

The Jubilee government was founded by two individuals who had been indicted at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity. And that is the problem. They unleashed the spirit of impunity that they are now struggling to contain.

A union consummated in the bed of impunity can never give birth to an accountable and corruption-free administration. Let me be clear that those who were supporting the ICC process were not asking for the conviction of the two, they were asking for accountability. UhuRuto rubbished the process, gave Chapter 6 of the Constitution the finger, ran for the presidency on an anti-ICC ethnic siege mentality and won.

The message that this sent to the now corrupt tormentors of President Kenyatta’s regime is that the end justifies the means. They taught the corrupt that the greatest shield against accountability is power. Get it by any means necessary and use it for impunity. It is called state capture. The use of state power to advance extra-judicial and corrupt ends.

JET SCANDAL

Soon after they won the presidency came the hustler’s jet scandal. Does it surprise anyone that the first act of impropriety and impunity on the part of the Jubilee government was directly related to the reason they had run for the presidency in the first place, to scuttle the ICC? Haven’t they, since then, completely scuttled the process through any and all means available to them, all of them extra-judicial? Haven’t the corrupt cartels taken a cue from them about how to use power to circumvent justice?

If the fight against corruption and impunity is the political circus President Kenyatta called it, it is because he and his deputy William Ruto wrote the script. West Africans say a man who brings a dead rat to his house should not complain when maggots pay him a visit.

Hadn’t he been saddled with the curse of the ICC, would President Kenyatta have successfully fought corruption? No. First, hadn’t he been saddled with the ICC indictment, Mr Kenyatta would never have become president.

He would have lacked the motivation to do so. Remember, Mr Kenyatta did not originally seek the presidency because he had the motivation, ambition or ability to do so. He ran for president because President Daniel arap Moi told him so. He needed the tragedy of the ICC to see the value of the presidency for himself.

ETHNIC COALITION

Secondly, without the ICC, the ethnic coalition that propelled him to power would have been difficult or impossible to form.

But let us assume that he became president without the ICC process. He still would not have successfully fought corruption. Again because of who he is. It is not possible to find any Kenyan presently who, on his own behalf, on behalf of his family, his and his father’s associates is more invested in the status quo than Mr Kenyatta. He is the poster boy of an oligarchy started by his father and entrenched by his political godfather and which he is a captive of. I have made the argument before that if Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, Mr Moi and Mr Mwai Kibaki met to select their successor, all would agree on Uhuru.

Does the Constitution tie his hands as he claims? There are two ways of looking at this. President Kenyatta is a sceptic when it comes to the 2010 Constitution and his deputy is an apostate who opposed it. They have a healthy contempt for the Constitution. They are ready to use it as an excuse for their own incompetence. This is an incurable problem, and I suspect it emanates from the earlier discussed investment of Mr Kenyatta in the status quo.

SUPREME LAW

The only viable proposition was for them not to run for the presidency under a supreme law they did not believe in. This is what happened to Mr David Cameron when he lost the Brexit vote. He resigned. He knew it was futile for him to try and implement something that he had opposed. In 2013, we did the opposite, elected Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto into an office where they were supposed to implement and protect a constitution they did not believe in.

But still, if the Constitution is the problem, why hasn’t the President proposed amendments that would enable him to fight corruption? After all, he did it with the security laws. Whether such amendments would pass or not is not the point, that he has not proposed them means he has not done all he could to fight corruption.

Regardless of what he has done or not done, President Kenyatta cannot run away from who he is. I hope he has learnt his lesson you can use power to run away from the ICC, but how do you run away from your history, your name and your own shadow?

Prof Michael Wainaina is a blogger on politics and society.

profmichaelwainaina.com