Githongo An ordinary kenyan responds

Mwiraria: I will get…to the root of the matter, I will find out who it is…Mwiraria: Ya... I have not appraised it….....but I will find out exactly...ya...that information.


I support any efforts to fight corruption wherever and whenever it occurs….what I don’t support it the deliberate scape-goating and politicising of the fight against corruption. This position is obviously because it has been proven in the past around the world and in Kenya, that scape-goating and politicizing of the fight against corruption has the opposite effect, in that, it actually enables the true perpetrators of corruption to get away with it or in fact allows then to “cleanse “themselves by pretending to be the new defenders against corruption. Corruption does fights back, and the best way to do so is to in fact, accuse your accuser of the same vice.

With this in mind we all have to make a concerted effort to fight the real war on corruption, not on rumours, not on innuendo, not on selective memory, not on political accusations but on cold hard facts.Without this cold hard facts our fight against corruption will be fruitless because this rumours, innuendo and false accusations will not hold any water in any court an will only result in futile courts case that are immediately thrown out due to lack of evidence. This witch hunts are not only is a waste of public funds, but also waste important time and resources for investigating and prosecuting the real corruption perpetuators. It is form this prism, that I look at the recent Githongo tape and the statements made above in them by the then Minister of Finance David Mwiriaria. After all the hoopla that Githongo has caused over the last two years about having in contrivable taped evidence against Mwiraria and others, when I heard of the release of this tape I was happy to see what the smoking gun was.

My happiness soon turned to anger, that by the time I was through listening to the tape and reading the transcripts I realised that we have been bamboozled, we have been hoodwinked, we have been cheated out of the fight against corruption and we have been in fact helping in the “cleansing “ of the real perpetrators of corruption.It is then, that I realised that Githongo was not the hero many think he is, he is in fact leading the charge in misdirecting us from the real fight against corruption to side shows that increasing smack of vengeance or political/personal vendettas or even worse as others have suggested, deliberate political manipulation for the benefit of foreign interests. How else can I not think otherwise when Mwiriaria comments on this tape clearly stating “I will get…to the root of the matter, I will find out who it is…” is construed to be a criminal offence or even an attempt to cover-up the issue. Mwiriaria was the Minters of Finance for gods sake.

Who better in the world could possible be able to get this information. The fact that Githongo claims that this implies guilt on the part of Mwiraria in the Anglo leasing scandal is beyond me and clearly shows that Githongo is in fact deliberately trying to mislead us. Another important discrepancy in Githongo version of events was that he was asked to drop the Anglo leasing investigations. First as we all know he was not an investigator, he was an adviser to the president. This is crucial in determine the legal culpability of whether there was any interference in the investigations. So if Githongo does not have the legal designation of an investigator, in Kenya that is the job of the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission, then can Mwiriaria’s suggestions be considered blocking an investigation. However that is really a side issue, because if we analysis what Mwiriaria said he was in fact asking Githongo not to stop the general investigation on the Anglo-leasing scandal but to stop harassing Ojiambo the lawyer.

Here is a recap of what Mwiraria said…Mwiraria:What I am suggesting… Why don't you... drop this matter... I will get… to the root of the matter, I will find out who it is.. but… if we continue this way... we start harrassing Ojiambo...


Again as we all know the taped conversation was all really about how Ojiambo the lawyer was arrested for carrying out legal instructions from the owners of Anglo-Leasing, the company. It is clear that the issue Mwiraria is asking Githongo to drop is the harassing on Ojiambo and not the general investigation into Anglo-leasing. In fact as he points out he himself was going to “will get… to the root of the matter, I will find out who it is..”. We also know of the Attorney/client privilege, where are lawyer legally cannot be compelled to divulge info on his client. Arresting a lawyer to do so is about as illegal a violation to this privilege. So Mwiriaria had legal merit in asking Githongo to stop harassing Ojiambo.

If Githongo wants us to believe that this is cold hard evidence of Mwiriaria’s guilt then he obviously must think we are retarded. It now seems to me that what really Githongo wanted was to bring down some big fish in the govt, if not the govt itself even though they were not the real perpetrators of the criminal corruption acts, but simply as examples, for whatever reason he may have. But the end result is that by doing so he has in fact politicised the war against corruption by doing so and made us loose focus on the real fight.A good example of this is when was the last time you heard about the Anglo-leasing court case against the Magari, the PS, Ministry of Finance who signed the contracts on behalf the Ministry of Finance or the PS, Immigration, who negotiated and signed the contracts on behalf of Ministry of Home Affaires or the Legal Counsel from the AG’s office who provided the legal approval of the deal. These are the real people who negotiated the Anglo-leasing passport contract and approved and signed the contracts. These are the accounting officers responsible for financial management of the ministries and who recommended to their respective Ministers that the deals would be beneficial to the country.The parliamentary investigations report in to the Anglo-leasing scandal stated that the PSs and Lawyer did in fact commit fraud and should be persecuted, even if they already had been and their cases were already pending in court.


Nevertheless the same authors of that report still maintain that the govt. had done nothing about prosecuting the Anglo-leasing perpetrators. You would think that there would be huge interest in how these cases are going, but the media hardly ever reports any. Instead what we hear lots of is Githongo shouting to the roof tops from the UK of his full proof evidence, which are in fact turn out to be neither proof or even helpful in revelling the truth. We also here lots from opposition figures who themselves have been deeply involved in corruption while in KANU and who were also involved in other Anglo-leasing type contracts shout and scream that the govt is doing nothing to persecute the Anglo-leasing scandal. According to them the persecuting the people who actually negotiated and signed the contracts is doing nothing. To me it is blunt politicising of the war on corruption with some help from Githongo. To many of these opposition figures, this is the opportunity to “cleanse” themselves from their current and past corruption activities and to pretend to be the our new saviours and the champions against corruption. Its now obvious that their plans have indeed succeeded in doing so, because as you are all aware, a number of them are campaigning to be Kenya’s next president. Yet their corrupt pasts, seem to have now been swept under the rugged. This is why I say now say that Githongo has played a major part in misleading us in this war on corruption, thanks to his focus on trying to get the so called big fish in the present govt. Its is a know fact that of the 18 Anglo-leasing type contracts, 10 of them were negotiated and signed off by the KANU government.

Its is also known that some of the major opposition figures now touting themselves as corruption fighters presided over these contracts such as Ruto, Mudavadi, Okemo, Ntimama, Sunkuli etc. These contracts include the first Anglo-leasing Finace contract which was the Forensic CID Lab contract and was signed on 16 August 2001, more that one year before the NARC govt took power. Why is it that we never hear this from Githongo ?He has made it seem that Anglo-leasing has been a purely NARC govt scandal, and as a result, has helped those opposition figures escape scrutiny for their actions involving those contracts. This has had the result of him helping to “cleanse “ these opposition figures. He has given them the ammo to further politicise the war and as a result the focus has shifted from all corruption to only recent corruption.Githongo has further politicised the war on corruption by his selective and timely release of his “ evidence “. I always wondered why he didn’t just release all the tapes at once to the Kenyan media and leave it all out in the open for all to see and judge. Its been more than two years since he went to self exile and he has had plenty of time to do so. But instead all we get a short edited clips released on BBC and now on his blog.


Why ? Of course we the people of Kenya have played our part by using this scandal to achieve our various political ends. However, in doing so are we really fighting corruption or are we playing our part in misleading everyone else away from the truth, and the real war on corruption. Are we “cleansing” past corrupt politicians and are we supporting them to form the next govt ? Ask your self this question as Githongo should be asking himself too. Are you helping corruption fight back ?

by kamakazi