Corruption, ethnicization and climate of impunity prevailing in Kenya for decades is a manifestation of deep institutional and state-building crisis. Unless this structural crisis is conclusively resolved, no leader however progressive and well meaning will make a difference. Past hindsight lessons remain the faithful teacher. The crisis is not that people steal public resources, abuse public offices and/or commit crimes. It is that we (Kenyans) allow them to get away with it and even tragically, reward them with management of public affairs as well as control of the public resources and institutions.
In fact, later this year, the largest segment of Kenyan population will tortuously queue to reward some of the most corrupt and criminally liable people with elective posts. It has been the raison d’être of public office in Kenya. The mere fact that people accused of international crimes can roam all over the country enjoying state protection while engaging in dangerous ethnic mobilization and escalating tensions expose the depth of the crisis. Partially this explains why politics is very violent but highly rewarding.
Truth be told, Kenyans and the international community have mostly under-estimated and misdiagnosed the extent of governance, human rights and rule of law crisis in Kenya. Much of the processes deployed to tackle governance crisis are surface-scratching without sustainability. Others are air-conditioned and skirt around core issues under pretext that if directly confronted, they would trigger ‘trouble’. Basically, they are instruments of ticking boxes and pacifying, not curing the malaise. Hence persistent recurrence and the tragedy of Kenya and Africa at large.
Public policymaking has mostly been reduced to a values-neutral, performance-allergic and political patronage. The country has failed to develop political values and culture to operate numeracy as constitutive governance instrument. Advocacy for change has been episodic rather than systemic.
The country has desired a credible and democratic transformation but failed to design fair and inclusive electoral systems that deepen democracy. It desires political change but forgets the transformation of the civil service. We have a country that demands a just system but never invests in reforming a justice system whose business and basic tools of work mostly have had nothing to do with justice for majority of people. People want to enjoy human rights but have failed to invest in assembling the right people to protect them.
The governance challenge before Kenya of effectively confronting impunity, ethnicity and corruption is based on four cumulative crises of political legitimacy; agency credibility; elite values and institutional capabilities. The country has over 49 years as an independent country, prospered corruption and denuded governance. Simultaneously, it has destroyed the citizen and produced elite without a coherent articulation of public good. Respective elites have corrupted politics, politicized and ethnicized anti-corruption annihilated the institutional capacities and vanquished accountability.
If war against corruption, ethnicity and endemic impunity is going to succeed in Kenya, we have to raise the bar on public transparency and accountability through long term investments in the capacities and values that underwrite the access to a secure public space in a nation. In order to break the cycle, people have to demand an overhaul of public policy and law-making as well as access to information. Further support to sustained civic actions, investigations, public advocacy and research is absolutely necessary.
Good government is founded on a tripod of three values: legitimacy, accountability, and capacity. Dispersal of power, establishing institutions of accountable government, and competitive democratic electoral politics are essential elements of an anti-corruption, ethnicity and impunity strategy. However this must not be taken for granted because currently democracy has been reduced into an event: conduct of an election.
Government is supposed to be a system of norms, rule constraints and institutional processes established for and by equal citizens. The legitimacy or credibility of the government is essential both for its revenue generation and service delivery. If government and people running it cannot adhere to basic agreed and set rules and expectations; and fail honesty, transparency and accountability tenets in words and actions, then the entire system is a travesty. And such is the Coalition Government.
Credibility is a function of both the nature of electoral legitimacy and fidelity to the norms of political behaviour. There is a logical connect between credibility and accountability. Accountability has both political and institutional dimensions. Institutional capacity is to be found in the independence and abilities of the judiciary, civil service, and bureaucracies of government to police the rules without which government becomes whimsical, arbitrary, and personalized.
Three processes are essential to the effective functioning of a country. These are: the processes of legitimating public power (elections); the processes of quantifying the demographic coverage of the country (census); and the processes of estimating and distributing the commonwealth (public accounts, including revenues and appropriations). These three inter-related processes – elections, demography, and public accounts, rely on the basic skills and institutions of honest policy numeracy.
Kenya’s multiple crises of governance exist because these are non-existent and corruption is such a problem. Whenever we have to count as a people, we compromise the institutions that exist to do it and subvert the processes of counting and accounting without which it is impossible to run a State that works. Regrettably, elections have become tools for affording a veneer of public legitimacy to plunder truth being said. As a people, we cannot count honestly and there are no consequences for dishonest counting.
However the political game is drastically changing. The old order still predominating, is attempting to resist change but the resistance is being thwarted by spirited public efforts that are making it costly. These efforts need consolidation and sustained support at national and county levels. There is concurrence of processes all with strong messages of change and new expectations. Political leadership, civil service and security apparatus are clearly being told to change for real and if not, they are challenged publicly. This momentum has to be escalated.
Writer is Executive Director, International Center for Policy and Conflict: nwainaina@iccpafrica.org
No comments:
Post a Comment