Matiang’i outlines his agenda to tackle corruption if elected president
By Arnold Ngure, July 2, 2025Former Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i has revealed his plans of fighting corruption should he be elected president in the 2027 general election.
Speaking during an interview on Tuesday, July 1, 2025, Matiang’i said that the problem with Kenya is not the lack of laws but the absence of accountability in public leadership.
“Nothing beats exemplary leadership. We talk more than we do in this country in terms of public leadership,” Matiang’i said.
Fight against graft
“The fight against corruption ought to start with the individual leaders at the decision-making table. You cannot tell people to stop doing what you are doing yourself every day,” he stated.
“This is something all of us need to do because it is hurting our country, and it is going to destroy the prosperity of our young people, and in my view, you don’t even need to write a new law.”
We have enough laws; we keep hiding behind the law and setting commissions. We don’t need new infrastructure, commission or law, we just need to live within the law that is in place and implement it,” Matiang’i observed.
He equally said that the institutions tasked with holding public officials accountable would do the country better by avoiding being politicised.
“We just need to be true to the ideals that the founding fathers of this nation had when they fought for independence and built a straightforward country,” Matiang’i stated.
Accountability in leadership
“We also need to have public officials become accountable for what they do; and if the agencies that are tasked with this responsibility to do their work resist politicisation, we would probably get somewhere.”
The former Interior CS has thrown himself into the race for president in 2027, where he hopes to form various alliances with politicians to develop a winning coalition of parties to run against President William Ruto.
Matiang’i is in talks with former deputy president Rigathi Gachagua, former Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka, former Justice Minister Martha Karua, Democratic Party leader Justin Muturi, DAP-Kenya Party leader Eugene Wamalwa and the Jubilee Party, among others, to form a coalition to run against President William Ruto in 2027.