Tobiko is Not Fit to Hold DPP Position

Nairobi Star (Nairobi)

Wycliffe Muga

16 June 2011

opinion

I was surprised to learn, quite recently, that Uganda has a Ministry of Ethics and Integrity. It reminded me of a Tanzania-based expatriate I once met who assured me that her work was in advising a Tanzanian Ministry with an equally improbable name: the ‘Ministry of Beekeeping’ (I have since learned, incidentally, that this may have been a private joke of hers, as what Tanzania actually has is a Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism, within which there is a ‘Forestry and Beekeeping Division’.)

All the same, I have to wonder what that Ugandan ministry, concerned as it is with ‘ethics and integrity’ would have made of the appointment of Keriako Tobiko as the Director of Public Prosecutions – something which seems imminent at the time of writing.

The question is, After all that we have heard, can we really believe that this is a man of sound ethics and undoubted integrity? Were the accusations made by Prof Yash Pal Ghai, merely a figment of the good professor’s imagination, or is it actually true that Tobiko considered the entire constitution-making process as little more than a ladder that he could use to get access to the top political circles, and thus ascend to high office?

At other times, these accusations may not have mattered all that much. In the first place, Kenyans were previously accustomed to a childlike obedience to the dictates of the imperial presidency. In the second place, doing the dirty work for those higher up than you – or even just having the unmistakable capacity for doing so – was a recognized path to advancement in both the Moi era, and the early years of the Kibaki presidency. But times have changed, and there is – I think – a critical mass of Kenyans who are determined that we should no longer live in a country where those in power more or less do as they please, and the rest of us just have to put up with it.

In the circumstances, accepting the appointment as DPP will most likely prove to be not so much a victor’s laurel on Tobiko’s head, as a crown of thorns. As long as he holds this office, every step he takes will judged against his seemingly irregular appointment, and unflattering assumptions will be made as to his motives for every serious decision he takes.

And there is no question that this is an irregular appointment. Nobody can say at this point whether he is guilty or innocent of all or any of these accusations. But it is clear enough that they bear looking into.

The logic being used by his supporters amounts to this: Let us first give him the job, and then we can investigate him afterwards. Now this kind of logic makes me uneasy. It is the kind of logic that was applied back in 2007 to the appointment of new commissioners to the (now discredited and defunct) Electoral Commission of Kenya. Because the arrangement for having all major political parties nominate members to the ECK was not embedded in law, President Kibaki went ahead and appointed his personal selection of new commissioners, supported with much enthusiasm by Martha Karua, who would now have us believe she is a leader of impeccable reformist credentials.

It was also the logic that was applied by those who said, in effect, “However controversial the 2007 presidential election may have been, let us first get President Kibaki sworn in for a second term in office, and then we can deal with the other issues.” The tragedy which followed on such decisions is too recent a thing to be forgotten so easily.

And nobody who remembers those days can possibly argue that parliament had an obligation to confirm Tobiko’s appointment without delay.

If the job for which he had been interviewed was that of the Minister for Beekeeping, then it would not matter that much. Maybe we could say that this is too insignificant a matter to be allowed to distract parliament in its onward march towards creating the legislative support structure for the new constitution.

But we have seen in recent weeks, two prominent Kenyans accused of having established offshore accounts worth hundreds of millions of shillings from the enormous bribes they received. And we have also seen the Free Primary School programme just this week revealed as having lost hundreds of millions too, stolen by corrupt officers of the Ministry of Education.

Anyone who wishes to become the DPP in a country where such evil flourishes, should in fact lead the way in insisting that he will not take up the job until his name is cleared of all accusations.

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