Thanks to Deep State, the Covid-19 nightmare will be long and painful

This week has served up a colourful buffet of arresting melodramas, all courtesy of our resolutely incorrigible political sector. One may rightly say that our taxes are seldom applied to intended purposes, but given these gripping sagas, it is untrue to suggest that we don’t get anything at all for it.

In the chamber of the august House, the member representing Kiharu Constituency vehemently protested a colleague’s conflict of interest. The conflict, he alleged, arises from the member’s leading role in a committee investigating the Kemsa “Covid billionaires” while being a beneficial owner of a firm implicated in the scandal.

Earlier in the week, a suspended Kemsa manager explained the circumstances under which highly questionable decisions were made to irregularly confer billions of shillings’ worth of “business” to firms operated or beneficially associated with powerful people in town.

 The manager depicted an environment saturated with threats, to the extent that his colleague expressed fears for his life. He also alluded to the notorious “deep state,” whose foot soldiers regularly called at the CEO’s office to reinforce their demands with compelling threats.

Deep State

By following the reports of the parliamentary committee’s proceedings, one begins to piece together the anatomy of the deep state. Last week I had described the deep state as the domain of impunity co-ordinated between delinquent elements of state bureaucracy on the one hand, and the business community on the other. It is a festering twilight zone of lucrative lawlessness.

The schemes are difficult to unravel: the “deep state” is a darkened maze of conspiratorial warrens into which billions of public money is squirreled. Powerful bureaucrats rent out their discretionary authority to oligarchs of the private sector who are not interested in conventional returns of competitive efficiency.

Everyone wins, yet everyone loses in this diabolical racket. The bureaucrat earns a kickback thousands of times higher than their official emolument, and the businessman banks billions for selling air, obviously far more lucrative that real production.

On the other hand, wananchi pay through the nose for public goods that are not forthcoming, and the private sector’s competitiveness and attractiveness are impaired by the toxic practices of cartels.

High government officials have repeatedly admonished Kenyans to be careful because they are on their own against a ravaging pandemic. The state cannot help. This is darkly ironic, given that Kemsa rapidly expended billions of shillings on supplies deemed needful in assisting large numbers of afflicted Kenyans. That is precisely how the scheme works: billions gone, nothing to show for it!

Air supply schemes

Not all public officials can pay for air. Similarly, air suppliers are not random traders in town. Strategically positioned individuals coordinate painstakingly to execute air supply schemes.

State authority is required, because serious budgets aren’t ordinarily left in the hands of regular joes. It helps to have blood, clan or other primordial connection with the air merchant, but ability and willingness to pay lavish bribes is essential.

Additionally, to overcome checks and controls, threats of harm and other forms of coercion and intimidation are used to augment bribes and kickbacks.

Obviously, a lot of deception pretence and bluffing is also called for, to motivate the gullible, timid or undiscerning into believing that the conspirators are acting legitimately. In the end, everyone is co-opted through subterfuge, menace, appeals to greed and need.

 That is how we end up in hell on earth: agonised citizens groaning in the throes of an escalating pestilence, billions paid for medical supplies that remain unavailable, managers complaining of threats, corruption allegations and dangerously implicated watchdogs. It is the typical deep state in action: government wholly or partially hijacked to service the dark side.

This political economy of delinquency comprises rapacious cartels that enable feral oligarchs to access state authority through corrupt politicians and bureaucrats. When this happens, the public interest is quickly extinguished.

This type of rogue public-private partnership thrives especially in times of repression and ubiquitous state violence. The burgeoning muscularity of government and increasing securitisation of the public sector have created the perfect conditions for the consolidation of the deep state.

This marks the beginning of the gradual abandonment of constitutional rule and the hollowing of all public institutions. The problem is that the formal state gradually loses both incentives and capability to hold the deep state at bay.

We have been here before, not so long ago: economic crisis, shrinking democratic space and draconian World Bank programmes. For millions, no hope was in sight. For a favoured few, life was glorious. There is an important difference, but scarcely the optimistic kind: a monstrous pandemic.

Thanks to the deep state, our nightmare will be very long, even as the Covid billionaires feast publicly and extravagantly.

@EricNgeno