WAS IT A SUMMIT OR INTIMIDATION?

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I watched closely the governance and accountability summit at state House. I was happy to see people discuss freely while others were seen to be intimidating other participants. The President said that Auditor-General Edward Ouko had indicated that he wanted to travel to New York to interview Federal Reserve Bank officials, following claims that they could have taken part in falsifying Kenya’s records.

Mr Ouko said that his work was to simply determine the authenticity of statements already presented by the government concerning the transactions so he can file a final report on the matter.

Criticising Mr Ouko, President Kenyatta said: “Na huyu amesema anataka kuenda kuinterrogate (And this man here says he wants to interrogate) Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Ngai! (My God!) Anyway, you know, you sit back and you ask yourself, are we being serious in what we are doing?”

The accountability summit was meant to be an occasion for the government to demonstrate how it is fighting corruption not intimidation to officers.

However, it was punctuated by accusations and counter-accusations by government officials more keen to defend their respective turfs against allegations of incompetence, and blaming others for the failure to tackle corruption.

I would like to reiterate that this is a waste of tax payers’ money because nothing tangible was reached at in the summit. I also blame the Attorney General for blaming our courts yet he is one of the commissioner. Is this the way we should conduct business?

What happened to the driver who narrated on how the traffic officers take bribes? He was threatened with arrest and the Inspector General lost words when other officers said that they would defend him from arrest. This is a bad show that government institutions are working without really coordinating for the common good of the people of Kenya. You don’t hit your critics but inquire more about the corruption issues. The summit looked like punching each other and later take tea and thengo home without having reached a conclusion and better yet a resolution.