For every National Super Alliance (NASA) supporter who believes a corrupt person can make a good leader there are two Jubilee supporters with a similar view.
The findings are detailed in a report by pollster IPSOS-Synovate released on August 22.
“Only one in ten Kenyans believe that a corrupt person can still be a good leader, though with almost twice as many Jubilee as NASA supporters holding the opposite view,” said IPSOS Research Analyst Tom Wolf.
Titled First Quarter Social, Political, Economic and Cultural (SPEC) Survey, the report reveals a worrying trend where Kenyans consider corrupt people to be bad leaders but still vote them into office.
In the findings, 125 of the 1043 Jubilee supporters interviewed are of the view that corruption had no influence on leadership.
Among those who believe a corrupt person can make a good leader, 65 per cent maintained President Uhuru Kenyatta is sincere in fighting graft.
While majority of Kenyans insisted being involved in corruption made one a bad leader, half of them said Uhuru was truthful in taming corruption.
The other half was shared with 37 per cent saying he was insincere while 12 per cent were not sure.
“Only about half of all Kenyans are convinced of the President’s sincerity regarding corruption, despite his recent aggressive stance against it, though slightly more of his own Jubilee supporters than those of NASA are among them,” Wolf said.
The statistics further paint a grim picture of integrity with only one per cent proposing electing leaders of integrity as means to end runaway corruption.
A majority at 33 per cent think imposing harsher and more certain criminal punishment would end corruption but even then 41 per cent cite political protection and intimidation as standing in its way.
“More Kenyans believe ordinary citizens would be held to account if they committed a serious crime as compared to a senior politician/government official or a rich businessman for whom a clear majority are certain they could evade any legal punishment,” the report noted.
IPSOS-Synovate interviewed 2,016 adults living in urban and rural areas in English, Kiswahili and Somali languages between July 25 and August 2.
The margin-of-error attributed to sampling and other random effects for the entire sample is +/- 2.2 with a 95% confidence level.
