Kenya President Under Pressure to Tackle Graft

Three months ago, in searing language, the British high commissioner to Kenya called on President Mwai Kibaki to purge corrupt officials from his government.

Despite additional pressure from the U.S., European Union and Japan, Kibaki -- who was elected two years ago on a platform of zero tolerance for graft -- has not fired officials widely believed to have used their government positions to line their own pockets.

Analysts say that those most frequently accused of corruption are some of Kibaki’s closest allies, people he cannot afford to fire because his ruling party appears to be splintering.

Members of the international community say they are watching closely to see how Kibaki responds to diplomatic pressure to clean up his government. If he fails, foreign aid and international loans could dry up, undercutting the nation’s economy and frightening off investors.

The optimism that followed Kibaki’s election and the ouster of former President Daniel arap Moi’s ruling party in 2002 has faded. British High Commissioner Edward Clay captured the disappointment over Kibaki’s anti-corruption efforts in his address to a group of British businessmen, saying that Kenya was still in the midst of a “giant looting spree,” with corruption consuming about 8% of the nation’s gross domestic product.

“We never expected corruption to be vanquished overnight.... We hoped it would not be rammed in our faces,” Clay said. “But it has: Evidently the practitioners now in government have the arrogance, greed and perhaps a desperate sense of panic to lead them to eat like gluttons.

“But they can hardly expect us not to care when their gluttony causes them to vomit all over our shoes.”

He said that corruption had cost Kenya about $188 million since Kibaki’s election.

Britain, Kenya’s former colonial ruler, has major business interests and thousands of citizens living in Kenya. After Clay’s comments, the European Union delayed a decision to extend aid to Kenya.

Without naming names, Western donors have called for the removal of corrupt officials.

“You have got a lot of hangover from the past,” said Gladwell Otieno, of Transparency International in Kenya, a watchdog organization. “You’ve got ministers in the new regime who are associated with some of the more egregious corruption of the old regime.”

Kibaki has made gestures to fight corruption, some almost quaint, such as posters declaring “Honesty Is the Best Policy” and exhorting the public not to pay bribes.

Kibaki has also set up an office of governance and ethics and an anti-corruption commission to investigate and prosecute corrupt officials.

Some analysts say the president is trying to do just enough to satisfy Western concerns.

“The suspicion is that there’s an attempt to offer up small fry and retain the big fish,” said Otieno, explaining that the few government officials who were removed were not key figures in corruption scandals.

Kibaki has said he will not act on rumors or unsubstantiated allegations and has called on anyone with evidence of government corruption to go to the authorities.

John Githongo, who heads the office of governance and ethics, said Kibaki was committed to fighting corruption.

“I think the entire government has changed quite dramatically in terms of openness. The whole country has changed. As a government we are unable to keep up with expectations,” he said.

The anti-corruption bodies have been fraught with controversy. Clay said that in an attempt to undercut Githongo’s office, senior Kenyan officials had tried to stop him from reporting directly to Kibaki. The move was quashed after an outcry by diplomats and anti-corruption groups.

In another recent setback, the chairman of the commission’s advisory board, Ahmednassir Abdullahi, resigned to protest Kibaki’s refusal to approve the appointment of a deputy director who had been nominated by the commission and approved by parliament.

“The president has announced to the entire world his utter disregard and contempt for the advisory board and the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission,” Abdullahi, chairman of the Law Society of Kenya, wrote in a newspaper article.

Western diplomats believe Kibaki will eventually be forced to ditch corrupt officials.

“He really doesn’t have any choice if he wants anything other than this country to go down the pan,” one diplomat said.