By Geoffrey Mbosero | @geombos

In the Game of Thrones final season, after Daenerys Targaryen (the Dragon Queen) has conquered King’s Landing with Drogon (the Dragon), there is a lingering moment between the first time the bells start ringing (signifying the surrender of the City) and the moment she decides to burn the city down. This is the moment that we see the beloved Mhysa (mother) and the breaker of chains go full-on mad queen. It is an inflection point in the story of the mother of dragons, one in which she chooses destruction over mercy.

During this moment, she does not look triumphant for having achieved what was her life’s goal (winning the iron throne); instead, all she has is anger and contempt for the people of King’s Landing. The Kenyan political discourse is at a similar point in its stop-start relationship with the fight against corruption. In this regard, it is time for Kenyans to decide whether we should fight this vice with all we have got or surrender to its elitist whims and its ravaging consequences.

In January 2021, President Uhuru Kenyatta shocked the nation by casually admitting that Ksh.2 billion is stolen from the government daily. This was a stunning admission to both the scale and scope of corruption engulfing his government. It was also a demonstration of President Kenyatta’s helplessness and/or surrender to the Corruption Industrial Complex.

According to Transparency International, Corruption has a corrosive impact on growth and business operations, shapes inequality and income distribution, and impacts the overall governance and business environment. This reality highlights the obvious – a robust economic development agenda cannot coexist with a corruption culture.

The Kenyan economy, since independence, has always had to contend with making room for corruption, which has since pervasively spread and malignantly embedded itself into the deepest crevices of governance and culture. Excising this tumor has always been the Holy Grail for many Kenyans; it is also a necessity for Kenya to stand a chance of realizing an equitable, just, fair, and working economy for all Kenyans.

The current political discourse is increasingly centered on the distinction between and merits of bottom-up and trickle-down economic models. This is a considerable departure from the traditional tribal calculus and personality cult conversations that have hallmarked previous electioneering processes. Don’t get me wrong, tribe and regional kingpins are still likely to play a massive role in 2022, but as national conversations go, I consider this development a move of the needle toward progress.

Conspicuously absent from the national debate is perhaps the defining challenge of our time, corruption, specifically what to do to eliminate this scourge that has weighed down the country’s post-independence economic apparatus. Economist David Ndii, who is publicly affiliated with William Ruto and UDA, tweeted the following regarding the necessity of the fight against corruption:

Mr. Ndii’s sentiment encapsulates the general attitude embraced by the UDA wing of the political establishment. The nonchalance toward corruption in this wing of the political divide is so entrenched that it is increasingly becoming an extension of their ideological conceptualization of the local economy. To most of these politicians, corruption is a kind of entrepreneurship that should be celebrated and not punished. The bottom-up political model does not care about corruption because it does not affect the poor (hustlers).”

No one has made a more forceful defense of the Corruption Industrial Complex in the modern political discourse in Kenya. The fact that they are saying the silent parts out loud reveals a certain comfort in their skin, an exhalation of some sort that the fight against corruption is unlikely to get off the ground floor. This reality should not only appall Kenyans but shock them into their senses.

Corruption should not be normalized. Once economic advisers in high echelons of a political party with a realistic chance of forming the next government begin laying the groundwork for utter disregard of corruption as a pertinent issue, it is time to reach for the panic button.

The deepening ubiquity of corruption in the Kenyan culture is already sapping out of the economy any capacity it has of meeting the economic challenges facing Kenyans. The fact that the proponents of the “people-based” bottom-up economic model are the ones least concerned with fighting corruption is a stunning irreconcilable irony. It also calls to question all the goody goody rhetoric they are doling out to the masses about empowerment. A corrupt government, or one that condones the Corruption Industrial Complex, is fundamentally a top-down oligarchy.

Unless this is what Ndii and UDA are selling to Kenyans, then someone is pulling the wool over our eyes. Unless these folks fancy themselves modern-day Houdinis, they stand a snowball’s chance in Mombasa in realizing successful change to the Kenyan economy that will have positively tangible results to hustlers that without decimating the existing elephantine corruption.

The other side of the political divide makes half-hearted and demonstrably hesitant references to fighting graft. Although they do not portray a similar bold, almost cynical, abandonment from the fight, they do not necessarily inspire confidence that the war can be won under their leadership.

In 2002, the momentous election of Mwai Kibaki to the presidency, as the reign of President Moi was emphatically halted, was driven primarily by the hunger among Kenyans to create a fairer, equitable, and just society. Fighting corruption was a prominent cog in the National Rainbow Coalition’s manifesto. Retired Mwai Kibaki and his star-studded team paid massive lip service to the fight against the decades-old KANU-fomented corruption.

What followed was a hasty retreat from these promises and a full-throttle embrace of the Corruption Industrial Complex. Even as the Justice Bosire Commission theatrically investigated the Goldenberg Scandal, members of the Kibaki administration were setting about spawning new schemes to defraud and steal from the public coffers.

The hopes that Kenyans placed in a new government were all but extinguished almost immediately as details and revelations of massive graft in the Kibaki government emerged. The trend has not changed in the Uhuru Kenyatta-William Ruto government as captured by the President’s admission to daily KSh.2 billion losses to corruption. Corruption has continued to thrive unabated as the country has taken up more debt and plunged into ever worsening economic shape.

This brings me to the current discourse and the worrying relegation of corruption from the national debate for the 2022 elections. With Kenya’s history of corruption, the electorate should be more demanding of leaders; the basic threshold of demonstrable integrity and accountability is imperative. The country is at an inflection point, we are about to cross the Rubicon with corruption. The decision Kenyans make in 2022 will determine the trajectory of corruption in the country for a generation.

Leaders without demonstrable policy proposals to fight corruption and track records to boot should be unelectable. We have had enough Faustian bargains; it is time to choose the country over personality cults. We should demand more of our leaders; it is the only way we can get them to offer more! Anyone interested in any elective office (from MCA to President) should be forced to explain their philosophical and ideological underpinning on the issue of corruption. For the presidential contest, an anti-corruption platform should be the bare minimum.

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