As promised, this is the second installment to President Uhuru Kenyatta to echo what I am sure he is probably already thinking of and most certainly heard from thousands of Kenyans already. The only difference in what I am stating to the president is the rationale.
Corruption
Mr. President, recent events, not the least of which is the Eurobond situation, have certainly taken lives of their own and prompted me to delay my original sequence of thought in my unsolicited series of open letters to you- there is still room to catch up but first things first; since my last installment, you hosted the Pope whom you asked for intercession prayers to help you in your fight against the corruption; devolution Secretary Anne Waiguru resigned and despite her protestations and announcements that she will be a government witness against her juniors, we now learn from the EACC that she is indeed a suspect in the corruption in the ministry, needless to say that only erodes the government's credibility while enhancing that of your detractors, especially CORD; you have also reshuffled your cabinet while announcing steps to combat corruption, as it stands today, you have dismissed over one quarter of your cabinet over corruption since taking office, I say that is great that you are taking action. I raise this issue because this Eurobond saga portends a real possibility that Jubilee's tenure could terminate prematurely if there is more bad stuff in the closet, it is within the realm of possibilities.
Gaps in announced gaps against corruption:
Unlike the opposition who publicly denounced EVERY SINGLE item of your announcement, most objective persons, including myself, applaud you. The international community welcomed also your announcement. I applaud you because you acknowledge the problem but I don't think the steps you announced go far enough because it left the status quo intact. I was hoping that you would announce a "zero tolerance" to corruption but you did not. Specifically, we did not hear you announce stringent enough steps that you are taking to recover the stolen loot from the kleptomaniacs or how to inoculate the system to prevent the scourge from recurring. Perhaps it was an innocuous omission on your part and others may think it was a deliberate omission and here is why, the kleptomaniacs who loot our money are known to you or should be known to you. You see, the corruption in government is inbuilt Mr. President, it is systemic insofar as business transactions with the government are concerned because majority of the companies or vendors who do business with the government are owned, co-owned and/or sponsored by government officials themselves. That is a BIG PROBLEM because the risk for corruption is inherent in all government transactions, it is the proverbial fox guarding the hen house. It won't fix itself.
The government can recover lost money if it wants to
There doesn't appear to be a genuine push or real interest to recover the lost money even when it is clear you can and that's why it is hard for the public to take your announcement seriously. It is not enough to find out who done it, make them return the money and we'll know you are serious; so when you don't mention recovery efforts and closing the looting loopholes then we have to wonder whether you are serious about solving this problem or you are just reacting to the public uproar to calm the public nerves when in real sense it is business as usual or you are covering for cronies and their proxies.
Your government knows or should know who it pays these monies to, it has a record of all purchases and payments it has made going back decades, it shouldn't be a secret; it knows who the payees and purposes for the payments are, they are not hard to trace if you know what you are looking for in an excel spreadsheet, I will even design the template for you if none exists already but I am sure there is one somewhere; and so if indeed you are sincere about stopping the scourge, you could have just as easily ordered a) a complete audit that includes audit/paper-trails of all transactions and payments made by the government to ALL its vendors in the last ten years and peruse the data starting with the current period going backwards; I mean ask to see all service/product requisitions, purchase orders, order delivery packing slips, service completion certificates, invoices, payment vouchers, bank records, etc. There is a databank somewhere with all the information you need, let's review it;
b) Order a moratorium on all government transactions with entities directly or indirectly owned or sponsored by government officials and
c) compel/require all vendors/companies doing business with the government to declare and fully disclose their relationship with government officials, this way they will be on notice and we can start enforcing ethics on them.
And please don't get me wrong, folks have to make a living and we don't want to ban businesses or discriminate against any business entity on account of their relationship with government employees, no, we just need transparency to be able to enforce ethics and to eliminate conflict of interest as much as humanly possible.
Eurobond Fiasco:
Eurobond should have been Restricted and Segregated
According to what your government told the public as reasons for the loan, the Eurobond was obtained for specific purposes, Consequently, the proceeds from the loan should have been restricted to those specific purposes and segregated within the general/consolidated fund, perhaps in its own sub-account and sub ledger- it is rudimentary stuff. Standard government practice in the US for example who run different projects and source funds from various sources do that, e.g. Highway funds generated from gasoline tax are restricted for such use and are segregated in the Highway Trust Fund for accounting and traceability, counties also issue Infrastructure Bonds or have special taxes generally known as Special Purpose Local Option Tax (SPLOST) which are also restricted and used for the purposes they are raised, I mean it is a given, never even a question. But here we are in Kenya, our Harvard educated finance secretary did not have the presence of mind to steer and safeguard the Eurobond money as he should have, he had a fiduciary duty to do so and failed miserably, some would call that dereliction of duty in a nutshell, now he is providing conflicting information about the funds. One minute no funds were lost, the next minute he is asking for information from ministries that received the cash- you can't have both ways sir, I mean it is a non-sequitur Mr. President. That is the problem you need to fix it before it gets out of hand, it will only get worse from here on out.
Consequently, given the aforementioned and if what we now suspect is true about the Eurobond proceeds is true, i.e. that Billions and Billions of shillings of Eurobond shillings have been lost to corruption, then you have a much bigger problem to worry about than re-election, just being real. This would be a bigger problem than Goldenberg and Anglo-Leasing and the ones before that combined and the blame will be squarely on YOU sir for obvious reasons, the buck stops with you. So at this point, I say let's give you the benefit of the doubt and presume our suspicions and speculations, are just that- suspicions and speculations; but I will bet that if it turns out, based on the financial data your government shares with the public online as we have requested, that your numbers match up and there are no material discrepancies, then we all owe you not only an apology but a THANK YOU for being such a great steward of the Eurobond loans. If on the other hand it turns out that indeed money was stolen on your watch, then I think it will be only fair that you own up to the hopelessly dysfunctional government that I, for one, raised alarm bells more than a year ago, and take appropriate remedial steps acceptable to the public at large including and up suspending your entire government and starting over.
Your Team must be responsible with their public statements
First off, as stated elsewhere in this series, your problem is the company you keep Mr. President, from your Deputy President, your cabinet, your leaders in parliament and your communication team- they are not helping you much. For instance, while it appears there are several corrupt shenanigans in the Eurobond saga and you have essentially admitted that corruption is rampant in your administration, your Deputy President William Ruto, Majority Leader Aden Duale have instead lambasted the public and blamed the opposition for "sabotaging the economy" just for stating the obvious, they essentially called us stupid and unable to count a "Billion" much less know what a Eurobond means, all true. It is an insult beyond believe and doesn't help your efforts at all but rather stokes anger, despondency and resentment especially when viewed from the prism of the massive contributions in Millions of shillings that Ruto has been giving at Harambees while being derisively dismissive of those of us demanding answers. I can't reconcile the two, how can you fight the scourge when you and your team are never on the same page? It is corruption that is sabotaging the economy, not those of us calling it out, come on now. Ruto's known salary cannot support the contributions and I don't know what businesses he owns that are so profitable with such big margins to be dished around in Harambees on a weekly basis, it is not hard to make a logical inference that perhaps his dismissals are a reaction intended to stop us from inquiring into the source of his own wealth, for all we know it could be from the Eurobond loans. Similarly, we are told former CS Anne Waiguru owns a house she paid KSh. 100 Million for, I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer but it raises legitimate questions on how she affords such on a civil servants salary, we would like to know. And she is not alone either, it is case after case after case.
Further, DP Ruto and Finance Secretary have vehemently denied that no Eurobond money was lost and yet refuse to offer full accounting, I don't know what accounting or financial expertise/background they have but they should back up their denials with full disclosure of the Eurobond money to the public so we can scrutinize the details for ourselves. Unfortunately AI don't think they will because Rotich is now on record stating that he can't tell what projects the money was spent on other than in "probability" – in his submission to the Public Accounts Committee, he said he has given the ministries that received the money 3 weeks to provide a full accounting of what they spent the money on, that is inconsistent with their insistence that no money was lost, how would they know if they don't even have any accounting of how it was used?
In another case, your digital team on social media led by one Dennis Itumbi is becoming increasingly bizarre, now Itumbi simply deletes comments that are critical to his posts which if my understanding is correct are done on government time and for the benefit of your government. I think it is juvenile to do so and manifests a stark bankruptcy of ideas which in turn reflects very poorly on you sir; just how would you read the public's mood if your own team is censoring public reaction to government propaganda? And while at it, is it possible to get all government related communication on official government page that the public can respond to so it doesn't fall under the excesses and abuses of individual whims like we have seen from Itumbi lately? If someone is drawing a tax payer funded salary as a propagandist, the least they can do is respect the public, no government employee should be allowed to treat or manipulate government communication as his/her own.
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