Matiang’i warns of an incoming House likely to be full of fraudsters

Last week, Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang'i repeated allegations that 40 per cent of incoming legislators are likely to be money launderers and 'wash-wash' crooks.

Forty per cent? That is serious. Extremely serious. It means nearly half of the next Parliament will be infested with criminals.

I presume from the powerful office Dr Matiang'i occupies, he has the correct intelligence information to back his startling claims.

Granted, the CS is not given to loose talk. So there must be some basis to what he said. 

The CS further claimed that banks were experiencing a shortage of Sh100 and Sh200 currency notes because politicians had withdrawn them to bribe voters.

According to data from Central Bank, there was an increase of Sh18.5 billion in circulation outside banks in the first four months of this year, compared to Sh6.6 billion in the same period last year. 

Analysts believe the spike is attributable to politicians withdrawing cash to bribe voters.

Dr Matiang'i was more categorical: much of that was dirty money being laundered. 

Integrity vetting 

The buck stops with the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC).

It submitted a list of 21,863 candidates to the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) for "integrity vetting", then ignored almost all the 241 names the anti-corruption agency flagged as questionable.

Many fall in the category Dr Matiang'i decried. Fifty-five have been charged with criminal offences, three have convictions and 11 are under active investigation.

Others are accused of forging academic certificates.

The IEBC's defence that its hands were tied as long as the individuals were not convicted or had outstanding appeals failed to draw a crucial distinction: that Chapter Six of the Constitution demands that a state officer should be as clean as a whistle when it comes to integrity and ethics. 

One of the politicians with a whole raft of graft cases is United Democratic Alliance's Rigathi Gachagua.

On Thursday, the High Court ordered that he forfeits Sh202 million it ruled was stolen from the state through fake tendering. Gachagua intends to appeal the decision. 

I don't suppose the appeal will have been finalised by August 9. The MP is facing other corruption-related charges.

So we are likely to see the spectacle of a Deputy President (if his coalition is elected) juggling his duties with regular court appearances over his corruption cases.

The late vice-president George Saitoti, despite being implicated in the 1990s Goldenberg scandal, was never charged. 

One of Gachagua's cases is a Sh7.3 billion indictment where prosecutors believe the money came from proceeds of crime between 2013 and 2020.

In April, Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Noordin Haji made a curious declaration that he would prioritise election-related misconduct lawsuits over graft cases while agreeing to push the hearing of the Gachagua case to September, after the August election.

That is notwithstanding Haji saying as early as July 2021 that he was ready with the evidence. Ehe? 

The DPP's position has raised eyebrows. Question is, what's so special about election cases that they should merit special treatment?

Gachagua has another NYS-linked graft case, which is listed for hearing between January and July next year. Wow! The dude has a crowded court calendar indeed. 

Poor record

The problem with Mr Haji is that he has a poor record as an anti-corruption prosecutor.

One of the few corruption convictions of a politician he has successfully secured is that of Sirisia MP John Waluke.

But he proudly remains an MP. And yes, the IEBC happily cleared him to defend his seat despite the EACC blacklisting him.

In 2020 he was jailed for 67 years and fined nearly Sh1 billion for theft and forgery of documents relating to a contract to supply maize to the National Cereals and Produce Board.

He appealed and is free on bail. In what amounts to a frantic hope for self-preservation, Waluke has opted not to defend his seat under UDA – where he belonged – and shifted to Jubilee. 

Parallel political gymnastics are lately being displayed by Mike Sonko, who was barred by the Supreme Court from running for the Mombasa gubernatorial seat due to his previous impeachment as Nairobi governor.

He now threatens to reconsider his support for Azimio and hitch his wagons with Mombasa's UDA gubernatorial candidate Hassan Omar.

Weirdly, Sonko is now blaming Azimio's Martha Karua for the Supreme Court judgment, because she's friends with Chief Justice Martha Koome. 

In 2010, Saitoti, who was the Internal Security minister, tabled in Parliament a report from the US embassy naming four sitting MPs as major drug traffickers.

Some of the names are still very active in public life. None was ever charged (a Kenya police report exonerated them).

However, a notorious trafficking family from Mombasa, the Akasha brothers, were later extradited and jailed in the US when it became apparent local law enforcement wasn't going to jail them. Saitoti was to die in an unexplained helicopter crash in 2012. 

A survey last year by Afrobarometer – a Pan-African, non-partisan research network – indicated Kenyans viewed nearly 50 per cent of their legislators as corrupt, just above judges and magistrates at 48 per cent.

* * * * * *

My considered view is that Raila Odinga got the wrong advice to skip last Tuesday's presidential debate.

I didn't support Uhuru Kenyatta when he boycotted the 2017 presidential debate and I didn't agree with Odinga shying away from this year's debate.

If he felt corruption and integrity needed to be squarely at the centre of that debate or for some reason felt the moderators would not be neutral, he just needed to be there to force his issues on the table. Unfortunately, it looked like he copped out. 

Well, veteran pollster, Tom Wolf doesn't foresee any huge impact from Raila's withdrawal.

He thinks Kenyans have already made up their minds on who to vote for.

Indeed, the latest polls released on Friday by TIFA Research and the Centre for African Progress have Raila marginally ahead. 

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