Aggressive crackdown on corruption will vanquish vice

In 2015, President Uhuru Kenyatta, in the third year of his second term, addressed the nation with an ambitious pledge in which he promised to take on an all-out war against corruption.

Almost five years later, we are beginning to see the results of this difficult undertaking. The country has successfully mitigated a period of acute rise in corruption-related cases. Moreover, Kenya has turned this problematic trend around and made gradual progress by achieving better and better ratings in global anti-corruption indexes year on year.
Corruption is an endemic problem that has been running through our society since the foundation of the republic. It has been wired into our brains as naturally associated with so many everyday situations. Slipping a few bank notes to a police officer in order to avoid a fine is something that many of us have done before, or at least heard of someone else doing. Unsurprisingly, bribery also found its way into the highest circles of government. It is on this level that corruption has truly proliferated. In this regard, for many years, the National Treasury has reported that it was unable to account for large sums of public funding, often amounting to billions of shillings taken out of the peoples’ pockets.
Back in 2015, Uhuru set out to implement a multifaceted framework to counteract governmental corruption. This commenced in light of the fact that the misappropriated funds threatened his policies working to bring a better standard of living to the citizens.
At the time, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commissions (EACC) found that a staggering 70 percent of corruption occurred in procurement; that is, the process of hiring private companies to supply public goods and services. That year, Transparency International concluded that Kenya ranked at a shocking 139th place out of 180 nations surveyed when it came to corruption-free governance.
Realising the magnitude of the problem and recognising the main players feeding it, Uhuru declared corruption as a threat to our country’s national security. Private corporations and office holders had to reckon with an increased level of scrutiny. Companies hoping to compete for government tenders were obligated to sign a Business Code of Ethics. Companies violating this ran the risk of being barred from doing business with the government for a period of five years. Furthermore, executives responsible for the misconduct would be placed on a ban-list.
Directly related to this idea of exposing corruption is the Bribery Act. Since it came into effect in 2017, it has provided a system of preventing graft through investigating and punishing bribery-related offences. The law has been responsible for encouraging officials and citizens to report corruption regardless of whether it appears in corporations or in government. As for the latter, nothing shows Uhuru’s commitment to his pledge more clearly than the fact that he has supported the investigation of members of his own government on more than one occasion.
There have been those who have – misguidedly – argued that the aggressive crackdown on corruption only prompted it to burgeon even further, albeit more out of sight than previously. It is true that the yearly Corruptions Perceptions Index from 2016 seemed to indicate the worsening of the situation exactly in the wake of the government’s first actions to curb corruption. Kenya slid back to 145th place in the best-to-worst ranking of corrupt states. Some commentators saw this as a sign of encouragement for those who engaged in bribery and got away with it despite the government’s alleged vigilance.
What has been largely overlooked however, is that each year after 2016, Kenya has become closer and closer to reclaiming its position as a more transparent, legitimate and trustworthy country in both rankings and in the peoples’ eyes. In fact, by last year, Kenya even improved its ranking from 2015 by achieving 137thplace, thanks to the work of Uhuru and his government. Naturally, we have a long way to go as a country. At the same time, the fact that a challenge as widespread as corruption has thus far been effectively counteracted should cause at least some optimism.
The Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) promises to carry the progress we have made as a country on the front of corruption even further. With proposals such as making officials’ wealth declaration forms public and digitising all government activities for the purpose of transparency, we have the unprecedented chance to continue to create a more united as well as a more fair system of governance at both the state and county levels.