MOST
GOVERNORS HAVE DEVOLVED IMPUNITY TO THE COUNTIES
By Jerry Okungu
Nairobi, Kenya
August 14, 2013
The sorry tale of
governors we recently elected to devolve services to our villages is a sad one.
Kenyans are beginning to question the wisdom of having devolved the government
so soon after the elections. Perhaps this is God’s way of punishing an
electorate that never learns from its past mistakes.
The root cause of the
early rot we are seeing in our counties lies in the fact that at all levels of government;
there was no credible election right from the party primaries. Election malpractices
by all parties were the order of the day. Party owners chose to plant their
cronies in positions of power at the expense of democracy. They sacrificed
democracy at the altar of mediocrity. And now, through the governors, CMAs and
MPs we are reaping the fruits of that mediocrity.
However, before we even
condemn governors, let us turn our attention to that august house that calls
itself the National Assembly.
When it opened its doors
to the first business of the day, we saw greed in its raw form. And for the
first time we saw a different side of politicians. They are only divided in the
quest for state power but united in greed. During the debate on their salaries,
it was difficult to distinguish between Jubilee and Cord MPs. In fact Cord MPs
were more militant in their support for the Leader of Majority than the Jubilee
legislators. Ripping the treasury was a life and death assignment for some of
them especially the new MPs.
When Madam Serem succumbed
to the demands of MPs with assistance from William Ruto, the floodgates were
open. Suddenly teachers, doctors, County Assembly Representations and
university lecturers joined in the band wagon. MPs had proved to them that there
was cash to be dished out. As the saying goes, for every action, there is an
equal and opposite reaction. To put it better, every action is bound to have a
ripple effect which can either be positive or negative.
When William Ruto went to
arm twist Sarah Serem to give the MPs their demands, one hopes he anticipated
the consequences.
The governors’ case is a
unique tragic realization for Kenyans. When Kenyans fought tooth and nail to
have a constitution with devolved governments, they were tired of biased
distribution of national resources. They were tired of an all powerful
presidency. They were tired of greedy MPs who only minded their personal
aggrandizement. They thought the devolved governments would take them to
Canaan. They were wrong all the way. Now the reality is dawning on some
counties that they might have jumped from the frying pan to the fire itself.
In Kenya, everything seems
to be going wrong with the devolution. If mandarins of the National government
are not busy sabotaging the process, the chairman of the Transitional Authority
seems visibly lost most of the time. In fact by merely looking at the TA
Chairman, one wonders where he was fished from. He doesn’t inspire any
confidence among the people he is supposed to assist through the transition.
In the run up to the March
4 elections, there were so many discussions about the type of people that
counties should elect as governors. The advice was to elect people with
business background in the private sector, those that had experience in
handling enterprises. It was the reason Evans Kidero became attractive to the
people of Nairobi and Cyprian Awiti was thought to be a suitable candidate for
Homa Bay.
However, as horse trading
reached its peak among political parties, suspected drug lords, corrupt civil
servants and disgraced officials in their former lives emerged from the wood
works and presented themselves to party bosses as the right and suitable
candidates. These mandarins did not come to party leaders empty handed. They
masqueraded as the real party supporters with the requisite resources to help
party leaders win elections.
In the end we ended up
with some former permanent secretaries and ambassadors who had embezzled public
funds for decades in the Central government. And when they saw the billions
allocated from the treasury to their counties their adrenalin shot up many
times over.
They hurriedly put
together budgets that had nothing to do with devolved services but rather for
their personal grandeur.
Suddenly the talk of the town was the
governor’s palatial home, grand office block, and top of the range fuel
guzzlers for top officers, millions of shillings in allowances and pornography
campaigns for the governor. Millions more were set aside for several trips
abroad and retreats to the Coast for the governor and his cabinet and of course
a retinue of handlers. Suddenly some governors had moved in to hotels with
their families for all sorts of reason. While some moved in as they waited for
their palatial homes to be built or renovated, others moved it to attend
petition cases against them.
The era of the gravy train
was indeed with us in our counties. It would be awhile before Kenyans rose up
against this blatant greed that has been devolved to our counties.
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