What Chickengate ambulances say of Kenya’s governance

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a recent photo of President Uhuru Kenyatta in State House handing over ambulances bought with proceeds from the Chickengate Scandal to seven counties spoke volumes.

In one snapshot, it told of the contradictions of our ailing governance system in general and the Uhuru presidency in particular.

The ambulances were purchased with money recovered by a British court from Smith & Ouzman, a UK security printing firm which, together with its directors, were convicted in the UK for having bribed Kenyan election and examination officials to obtain contracts for printing.

And herein lies the first contradiction.

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While the UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO) diligently and successfully prosecuted its citizens for corruption that took place in Kenya, our own institutions, notably the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, the Police and the Director of Public Prosecutions did nothing to investigate and prosecute the Kenyan officials implicated in the scandal.

All of them continue to walk free and some even continue to hold public office.

The second contradiction is that for most of his presidency, Mr Kenyatta has conducted a massive campaign against the International Criminal Court, which he has accused of being a foreign court advancing neo-colonial interests at the expense of Kenya’s sovereignty.

His arguments have been misleading, self-serving and legally flawed in ways that are beyond the scope of this article. However, what is disturbing is that the same president, who is so passionate about safeguarding Kenya’s sovereignty saw no irony in using the hallowed grounds of State House, one of the symbols of that sovereignty, to flag off ambulances bought with the proceeds of money stolen from his own people in enforcement of a foreign court order.
The third and final contradiction in this whole drama is the unspoken role of Kenyan civil society in demanding that money recovered from Smith & Ouzman be returned to the Kenyan people as they were the real victims of the bribery of our election officials.
This is instructive because throughout the Uhuru presidency, the supporters of the regime have carried on a hate campaign against civil society, which they have derisively dismissed as ‘evil society’. 

As the Kenyan government maintained an embarrassed silence following the conviction of Smith & Ouzman and its two directors, Kenyans for Peace with Truth and Justice (KPTJ), wrote to the SFO providing some context with regard to the serious damage done to any young democracy when its electoral institutions are undermined through this kind of corruption.

It also argued that any fines levied on the company should be sent to Kenya as the Kenyan people were the ultimate victims of this crime.

In 2016, ahead of the confiscation hearing at which the company’s fine was to be assessed, KPTJ wrote to the Attorney-General asking him to apply to be enjoined in the proceedings to canvass Kenya’s public interest and to specifically make the case for the money to be sent back home. He ignored the letter.

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KPTJ also wrote to the Independent Electoral Boundaries Commission (IEBC) seeking to know what steps it was taking to recover the money that had been stolen from it through inflated prices for the election materials printed by Smith & Ouzman, but again it did not get a response.

A few days before the confiscation hearing, two KPTJ representatives travelled to London and met with the SFO and the National Crime Agency to further argue the case for restitution.

In all their letters and meetings, the civil society activists insisted that the money should not only be returned to Kenya, but should be given to a cause that would benefit the Kenyan people and not merely returned to the Treasury or the IEBC where it might be stolen again.

That the President had the opportunity to flag off the ambulances bought with this money is therefore in no small measure attributable to the efforts and advocacy of the same civil society that he disdains so much.

The proceeds of the Chickengate money could have been applied to any number of projects.

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That ultimately they were used to buy ambulances is perhaps the clearest sign that our governance system, riddled as it is with the above contradictions, is gravely sick and in need of emergency attention.

Mr Mue is a Senior Adviser to Kenyans for Peace with Truth and Justice