Kenyans will have to wait longer to get any meaningful development projects from the government as some elected leaders are now on a looting spree to fund their 2027 campaigns which are expected to be the most expensive ever in the country.

The political system in Kenya has been cited as the major impediment in the fight against corruption as those vying for elective offices are not vetted to determine their suitability due to legal ambiguity.

Politicians have continued to block the implementation of various laws that have been passed to curb graft, paving the way for the deeply entrenched corruption where Kenyans lose over Sh600 billion per year.

The looted money surpasses the total budget allocations of about Sh400 billion that the 47 county governments combined have been pushing for from the National Treasury.

But even as the next polls draw near, aspirants implicated in corruption deals but have not been convicted or exhausted their appeal cases can still find their way on the ballot and use the loot to buy their support.

African Voices Executive Director Samuel Kimeu said that lifestyle audit for both elected and appointed public officers remains the most effective method of ridding corrupt leaders from office.

Parliament, a key stakeholder in the fight against graft has been fingered for lack of keen oversight on independent constitutional bodies that are tasked with prosecuting corruption cases. 

According to Transparency International, corruption laws and the execution of the mandates of the critical institutions charged with the fight against graft lack the impetus due to mounting political interference.

“We have all these laws that exist but we still have critical challenges in regards to their implementation because the political elite have just not allowed these laws to work,” Transparency International Executive Director Sheila Masinde said.

Altering bills

Masinde faulted parliamentarians for altering some of the anti-corruption bills from their original state when they were debating them to weaken them so that by the time they are passed, they are not a reflection of the initial draft.

“Some of these laws have been generated from robust drafts. When they were being discussed in Parliament, passed and eventually enacted, we get weak versions of them. And that is largely due to the interference of the political class who have watered down critical bills making the anti-corruption laws really adulterated,” Masinde said.

“And this has left the fight against corruption very weak. A key example is, for instance, the leadership and integrity law. We had a very strong bill which was based on Chapter 6 of the constitution on Leadership and Integrity but eventually what came out of Parliament was a very weak version that we have been unable to implement more than 13 years later.”

Operations in some of the institutions tackling graft, she emphasized have been trimmed to size due to political meddling that has seen Parliament deny them adequate funding during the budgeting process.

Further, the agency noted the public finance management laws have been a disservice to the war on graft as budgeted corruption is still rife among public institutions which slips under the oversight of Parliament.

“Public financial management laws are not sufficient enough to curtail budgeted corruption. Parliament can only empower the Office of the Auditor General and the Office of the Controller of Budget to ensure that when public officers are generating budgets, they are not padding them to give them enough room for swindling public resources,” she added.

Entry point

Masinde who spoke during the launch of the Assessment of the Impact of Anti-Corruption Laws and Institutions of Kenya report called for reviewing of mandates of institutions handling graft as many of them are overlapping further derailing the anti-graft war.

“We’ve seen challenges touching on coordination, investigation, prosecution, adjudication of cases and recovery of assets because of some of the overlapping mandates between these institutions. Some of the functions are not implemented due to lack of clear guidelines on who to handle what,” she said.

Speaking during the same event, Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission Director of Field Service Jackson Mue hit out at the judiciary over the delay in delivering justice on corruption-related cases.

Mue proposed that graft cases should be determined within six months noting that the more the judgement is delayed, the more the cases become complex to prosecute.

“Currently, simple to complex cases are taking several years in our justice system. We have cases which are taking in excess of eight years so that by the time you are presenting your witnesses, some of them would have died. Such cases will also have lost public interest,” Mue said.

The EACC officials said that the agency must also be adequately funded, to a level that it can match the wealth of some of the culprits implicated in high-level corruption cases.

“Agencies responsible for anti-corruption will require sufficient resources. To follow these resources which have been identified by the agencies, you need to apply for a bit of resources which can only be through the budgetary provisions,” Mue said.

The revelations on politicians undermining graft war come at a time when President William Ruto is under fire over his church donations. This contradicts his directive to bar State officers from participating in fundraisers  to tame corruption.

Public fury has been building up as the president continues to donate millions to church projects while Kenyans continue to suffer due to the failure of the Social Health Insurance Fund to finance their healthcare.