Tag Archives: corruption

How quickly will the United States Government act in “analysis, evaluation and investigation” of The Sentry report on South Sudan?

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On October 2, Assistant Secretary Tibor Nagy, the top U.S. diplomat assigned to Africa, conducted a post-UN General Assembly telephonic press briefing and availability for journalists in various Embassies on the continent. Read the full transcript here.

There were a striking number of questions about Sudan and South Sudan, but I thought this was most pertinent:

QUESTION: Okay, I can talk? All right, my name is Emmanuel from Eye Radio in Juba. I believe Mr. Tibor, you have come across the recent report that was released recently by The Sentry about implicating some South Sudanese top government officials and actually come out with recommendations to the U.S. government, so what is your current recommendations?

ASST. SEC. TIBOR NAGY: Thanks very much for raising that. Because I know the people involved in The Sentry very well. As a matter of fact, one of the key people John Prendergast, I have known and respected for a very long time. Our Department of State, U.S. government, we welcome the Sentry’s efforts to bring light to corrupt practices in South Sudan. We know for a long time that there’s been quite a relationship between corruption and conflict, unfortunately. Innocent people have suffered. The United States will very carefully review the material presented and the recommendations in The Sentry report and as you all know, the United States of America maintains the right to use all of the tools available whether diplomatic or whether financial or anything else to respond.

Right now there are allegations, they’re very serious allegations but they do require some careful analysis, evaluation and investigation. Thank you very much, over and out.

Here is the link to The Sentry report, “The Taking of South Sudan“.

So before the “over and out” Asst. Sec. Nagy does commit the US to “very carefully review the material presented and the recommendations” but it is a bit ambiguous as to whether he is committing the US to the next step of “investigation” that he says is “required” since he characterizes the report’s findings as “allegations”.

My gut reaction is to think of Asst. Sec. Nagy as someone who would like us to conduct ourselves well when it comes to underwriting the type of conduct outlined in The Sentry report (although I don’t know him at all nor was I familiar before he was tapped for this job from retirement). At the same time, you don’t make a life as a diplomat without learning to carefully say very little and make it sound like it is more for those who want something enough to hear it. So, how quickly will we do our review/analysis/evaluation? What will we do next? How quickly will we investigate? Will we send the FBI? Career Justice Department prosectors? Alternatively, the Attorney General?

How on earth did USAID in Kenya end up helping to finance Michuki’s imperial Windsor Golf Hotel and Country Club? (revised)

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(The end of this post has been revised to reflect skepticism about an allegation by Kenya’s Minister of Natural Resources in 1998 that land for Windsor was irregularly allocated to Michuki from Karura Forest based on the geographic separation between Windsor and the Forest.  Not a central issue, but I want to be as fair as possible.)

This very interesting piece of diplomatic and development history is noted in a recent oral history interview by a former USAID official, Kiertisak Toh, which I have introduced and excerpted below. I have not found reference in the Kenyan or U.S. media to the USAID role in this high profile development started in 1988.

For John Michuki, the Kenyan baron of the Windsor Golf Hotel and Country Club and Kibaki’s Interior Minister during my time in Kenya, please see my post on the occasion of his passing in 2012: “The Michuki Rule, and personal memories: Independence Day, snakes and freedom” and “Don’t forget about the Standard raid“. See “Trust and Accountability: Africa Center for Strategic Studies scholar discusses steps to a peaceful election” with thoughts about his impact on the post election violence. More expansively, for a politico/business biography with an eye to multiplicity of controversies over the years, see “Who is John ‘Kimeedero’ Michuki?” at The Kenya-Stockholm Blog. “Death of an old guardsman” from The Economist:

But as the country’s internal security minister, his hands were covered in blood. He was implicated in mass extrajudicial killings in 2007, in which hundreds of young Kenyan men were shot in the back of the head or bludgeoned to death for their alleged involvement in the Mungiki organised crime gang. And in 2006 Mr Michuki made a fool of himself by bringing to Kenya a pair of Armenian gangsters to shut down newspapers and television critical of the government. Since then, the country’s media have operated more or less freely.

To many Mr Michuki was a bridge to an older Africa. The space between tribal traditions and the palatial Windsor Golf Club, which Mr Michuki built at the north end of Nairobi, can be measured in his life span. He was born in 1932 into a large polygamous Kikuyu family. Orphaned as a child, Mr Michuki left his rural home for Nairobi. He found work in a uniform shop sewing on buttons before battling his way through primary and secondary school. He was loyal to the crown in its bloody hammering of the Mau Mau insurgency. Choosing the British over his countrymen set him at odds with the founding myth of Kenya, but Mr Michuki was too intelligent and “no nonsense” to let it hinder his career. He won a scholarship to Oxford, and became a district commissioner. He was put in charge of newly independent Kenya’s treasury. He ran the Kenya Commercial Bank and got involved in politics. Like the then attorney-general, Charles Njonjo, Mr Michuki had an Anglophile sense of things “being done properly.”

To Mr Michuku, that meant keeping his buttons polished and being on time, but it did not mean transparency. He was part of the cabal of Kikuyu and Meru politicians, intelligence officers and businessmen who ran a state within a state and turned a blind eye to dodgy land and business dealings. President Mwai Kibaki yesterday called Mr Michuki a “true family friend and a dependable ally.” The shame was that his acuity and vigour were not more often put at the service of the common man. . . .

The Windsor Golf Hotel and Country Club is explicitly neocolonial. No one’s heart is going to bleed for the British Royal Family over the cultural appropriation but as an American taxpayer, I feel a bit wretched on learning my “assistance dollars” were used directly instead of just indirectly to subsidize Kenya’s oligarchs in this way. (Disclosure: I have been a member of a private golf club myself, years ago, although I gave it up when I had children. But I am also aware of a variety of laws and regulations in the United States designed to keep governmental development and tax subsidies away from underwriting golf courses, even those that are far less exclusively targeted to the rich than Michuki’s Windsor.) [And, yes, I understand we are spending millions on President Trump’s golf resorts, and I object to that accordingly; that is straightforward self-dealing by our chief executive himself, rather than a misallocation of meagre development resources from poor to rich.]

I highly recommend reading the full Toh oral history interview for anyone interested in understanding the course of relations between Kenya and the United States from the mid-1980s through 2005, as well as one insider’s perspective on the tension between democratization and economic development assistance goals (Toh is an economist by background and initially worked in that capacity for USAID before rising into administration):

The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project Foreign Assistance Series KIERTISAK TOH Interviewed by: Carol Peasley Initial interview date: February 9, 2018 Copyright 2018 ADST (funded by USAID Cooperative Agreement).

Toh’s positions in Kenya:

USAID/Kenya – Program Economist 1986-1989

USAID/Washington – Program Economist, Africa Bureau/East Africa 1991-1992

USAID/Kenya – Mission Director 2001-2005

. . . .

Q: Well, why don’t you talk- So, this was- you’re in Kenya in 1986 to 1989, so at that point was it a pretty good size program in Kenya, was it one of our premiere programs?

TOH: Yes, it was a high profile and one of the largest programs in Africa with big ESF [Economic Support Funds] money and CIP, Commodity Import Program. We were in the Cold War era. Kenya was considered our geopolitical and strategic partner in the region.

Q: Oh, there was a Commodity Input Program there. Oh, I didn’t realize that.

TOH: And a large- I guess we tried to make the CIP as part of the private sector development program. Kenya at the time had foreign exchange controls which were a barrier to private business to import.

Q: Ah. So, it was a large ESF program. Was that because the U.S. military was using the Port of Mombasa?

TOH: I think so. Q: Yes, okay, so there was a military link to that. So, a large ESF and that was mostly Commodity Import Program?

TOH: Yes, mostly tied to Commodity Import Program. The foreign exchange part of the CIP program provided the balance-of-payments support and the counterpart local currency served as budget support mostly tied to USAID project.

Q: Private sector development. Was the- would imports tied to any sector or anything or were they just broad- do you recall?

TOH: It was broad until 1989 when we turned part (or most, not sure) of the ESF into targeted support for fertilizer imports.

Q: Well, the importers would have been providing the local currency, right? They would have been buying the- in essence buying the dollars?

TOH: In general, we provided the dollars to the Central Bank. The idea was for the government to make it easier for importers to get import licenses and through Central Bank the foreign exchange to pay for imports. The private sector bought the foreign exchange with the local currency, Kenyan shillings, which was deposited in the special accounts at the Central Bank. The local currency legally belonged to the government. But we agreed to program these funds jointly. A big portion of the local currency went to support USAID projects and other private sector development activities..

Q: Right, okay. So, it really was to liberalize then the whole foreign exchange regime?

TOH: Right.

Q: With the local currency used for private enterprise development, did some of that go into credit programs to the banks, or do you recall? Or some of it budget support to ministries. How would it have been used, do you recall?

TOH: Part of these shillings might have been used to support microenterprise credit and loans to businesses. I remember one of the loans went to an influential Kenyan government official to help finance the Windsor Golf Club. When I went back to Kenya the third time (2001) we tried to clean up the outstanding default loan. I am not sure whether we were able to recover the loan. Our private sector development program, except for the microcredit and the CIP programs, was not well targeted. We kind of followed the “thousand points of light” approach.

Q: Women-owned micro-enterprises, because Kenya had one of the big success stories of microenterprise for women, right? KREP?

TOH: Right, yes. We had a project, I think, that helped KREP, Kenya Rural Enterprise Project. And I still have an account with KREP.

. . . .

Fundamentally, diplomacy and development, though can be complementary, are inherently different in their missions, targets, how success is measured. Diplomacy is about maintaining favorable economic and political relationships abroad; it tends to be short-term orientated and transactional. The mission of development is about saving lives and support for long-term equitable growth and poverty reduction; it tends to be concerned with long-term transformative and sustainable changes. The targets for diplomacy are political leaders and citizens where geostrategic and foreign policy interests are most significant. The targets for development are populations where potential impact on poverty, human suffering, and human development is greatest. The success of diplomacy is measured by the strength of the relationship with the U.S. and support for U.S. political priorities. The success of development is measured by the progress in terms of saving lives, reducing poverty, and enhancing equitable, broad-based economic growth.

There are a lot of interesting items to follow up on here: 1) has the Windsor loan balance been collected or not?; 2) why was this project selected and approved, how much money was involved, etc.? 3) in 1998 Minster of Natural Resources claimed in Parliament that Michuki’s Windsor Golf Hotel and the Belgian Embassy had been irregularly allocated land from Karura Forest, but the Windsor club is not adjacent to the Forest so the allegation does not seem to make sense in that way, but it would be interesting to understand the acquisition of the land. [Note: I have revised this to express skepticism about Lotado’s allegation based on the geography as raised by readers.]

Ranneberger’s Gainful Solutions subcontracted Washington Media Relations/Monitoring and Outreach to Sanitas in July after previous pummeling on news of hiring by Kiir Government

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Here is the July 19 subcontract agreement between Gainful Solutions and Sanitas as attached to the August 13 Foreign Agent Registration Act filing.

The Gainful Solutions-Sanitas deal was announced appropriately enough through Politico with a professional spin on Gainful Solutions “amending” the original contract with Salva Kiir under which they received the initial $1.2M non refundable cash payment from the Kiir government.

Those that are interested enough to follow the links and read the documents will notice that the “subcontract” goes well beyond the actual contract, raising the question of whether Sanitas could be paid to say things in Washington by Gainful Solutions that Kiir did not commit to in his contract (the April 2 contract initially paid , or the May 7 substitute).

This is the Prime Contract scope of work:

The Consultant services will include, but not necessarily be limited to, thefollowing:

1 Open a channel of communication between President Kiir and President Trump with the objective of persuading President Trump and his administration to expand economic and political relations with South Sudan, and supporting American private sector investment in South Sudan in oil, natural resources, energy, gas, mining, and other areas.

2 Improve bilateral relations between the United States and South Sudan.

3 Address sanction issues.

4 Seek the support of the Trump administration to unite the various ethnic groups of the country in order to build a stable and prosperous country.

5 Mobilize American companies to invest in the oil. natural resources, and other sectors

6 Persuade the Trump administration to open a military relationship with South Sudan in order to enhance the fight against terrorism and promote regional stability.

The Consultant will act as the agents of the GOSS, Office of the President, to facilitate and negotiate with American and Western companies for investment in South Sudan. The Consultant shall be entitled to certain residuals, compensation, commissions, or shareholding resulting from its facilitation and negotiation with American and Western businesses.

The Services will also include any other consulting tasks which the Parties may agree on.

Here is Ranneberger on Eye Radio from an August 15 interview doing a local media roll out: “Ranneberger indeed hired to smooth Juba–Washington DC relations“:

In an exclusive interview with Eye Radio yesterday, Ambassador Ranneberger admitted that the first draft of the contract that was brought to the attention of the public had the provision to stop or block the formation of the hybrid court.

“There was a bit of a mix up with the first draft of the contract and it got published, but you can look at our contract on the website –which the President [Kiir] has approved, and it says nothing about the hybrid court,” Ranneberger said Thursday.

He, however, confirmed that part of the campaign will include convincing US to ease sanctions on South Sudanese leaders.

As I noted on Twitter I do not understand what “a little bit of a mix up” or “first draft” means. The original contract was signed and filed with the Justice Department and according to the filings the nonrefundable initial fee payment of $1.2M of the $3.7M paid. After the barrage of criticism in the international media and organized opposition from South Sudanese civil society the contract was “cancelled” on May 2 and a second contract signed May 5, reflecting that the $1.2M was already paid. See South Sudan: New Salva Kiir-Ranneberger Foreign Agent filing shows $1.2M nonrefundable retainer already paid and $3.7M flat fee (contra Reuters).

Kenya 2007 election- Ambassador Ranneberger and Connie Newman at polling station NairobiMichael Ranneberger (Ambassador) and Constance Newman (Election Observer) at poll in Nairobi, December 27, 2007

The Registered Agents for South Sudan at Gainful Solutions are Rannberger, and his fellow ex-diplomats Connie Newman and Tim Towell and the other principal in the firm Sohai Nazari-Kangarlou.

If Kenya’s remaining IEBC Commissioners have committed to stick with the 2017 OT-Morpho (n/k/a IDEMIA) “Election Management System” they should explain why they sole sourced that firm in March 2017 and disclose the contracts

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At a briefing hosted this week by Kenya’s permanent internal election observation organization, ELOG, a Commissioner representing the IEBC indicated that the intention for the 2022 election was to reuse the KIEMS (“Kenya Integrated Election Management System”) system that was at the heart of the problems leading to the Supreme Court’s annulment of Kenya’s last presidential election.

Without scratching the surface into the deeper intrigues involving the re-election Of President Kenyatta and the technology involved, such as the pre-election abduction, torture and murder of acting ICT Director Chris Msando, or deported campaign consultants and police raids on data centres– not stuff for civil society seminars in Kenya–it would surely be the least Chairman Chebukati could do to explain why he and the Commission chose OT-Morpho/IDEMIA for the job in March 2013 in the first place.

Especially given that Kenya’s Parliament voted to debar IDEMIA and that Oberthur Technologies (OT) is subject to a world Bank debarment for bribery. Not to mention the firm’s strange role as a sole sourced substitute provider of problematic technology in 2013, when the Government of Canada stepped in to loan funds to the Government of Kenya to buy Biometric Voter Registration Kits after the supposedly independent IEBC had decided to go with a manual system instead. (According to what I’ve learned so far from a 2015 Freedom of Information Act request, IFES which was funded by USAID to assist the IEBC, reported back to USAID that the inability or unwillingness of the IEBC to resist this pressure from the Government to reverse its decision on the BVR system was a major setback in preparations for that election that reverberated through the failures with poll books and the Results Transmission in months ahead).

If the reasons for selecting OT-Morpho are to remain shrouded, the contracts themselves are public records and should be published. For some reason they do not appear to have been tabled in the 2017 Supreme Court cases about the presidential election–I am sure that was just an oversight and it is easily rectified now for the upcoming vote.

Peaceful marchers against alleged corruption at “partly private” power monopoly (#SwitchOffKPLC) are teargassed by Kenya Police Service . . .

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The #SwitchOffKPLC march in Nairobi against alleged abusive and corrupt practices toward consumers by KPLC, Kenya Power and Light Company, a partly privatized monopoly, was hit by tear gas from police.

Who has the teargas tender for the Kenya Police Service? In times of violence and times of peace, the Kenyan police are always there to teargas someone on behalf of some interest or another with access to the Kenyan State House.

Tear gas is not just for use against peaceful and lawful protests, like the #SwitchOffKPLC march today, but also celebrations that run afoul of State House sensibilities for some reason or another, as I so indelibly remember from February 28, 2008 when Kibaki and Raila signed the “peace deal” to end the challenges to Kibaki’s second term (in return for various commitments that were partially implemented over the years) and citizens celebrating the end of the Post Election Violence were gassed in what seems now like the a profoundly symbolic act. But today was more typical: citizens organize to call attention to public corruption issues, announce a march and notice the authorities as required, asking for security, Instead of being provided security by the Kenya Police Service, they get tear gassed.

I wrote about a parliamentary discussion touching on the question of whether the private shareholders of the partially privatized monopoly KPLC were helping themselves to free services from the taxpayers back in 2010. The latest scandals seem to go most especially to more direct forms of consumer ripoffs, but you can see the environment from the discussion:

Before new World Bank Loan announcement Kenyan Parliament Grills Asst Minister over issue of whether the gov’t is paying costs to the benefit of private shareholders of Kenya Power & Light

Eng. M.M. Mahamud: Mr. Speaker, Sir, the largest seven shareholders of KPLC are the
Kenya Government, which is represented by the Treasury; Barclays Bank of Kenya through various nominees accounts, the NSSF Board of Trustees, Stanbic nominees, the Kenya Commercial Bank, Jubilee Insurance and the NIC Services. As regards Transcentury, according to the books of accounts this year, the annual report of the financial statement for the year ended 30th June, 2009; it is listed as number 16 shareholder with 4.69 per cent. The highest share percentage is Kenya Government by 40.421 followed by Barclays Bank by 12.81 per cent and 23 per cent for other shareholders not listed in the accounts. But according to the report that I have
here, Transcentury only owns 4.69 per cent. I do not know about the other questions that Dr. Khalwale is talking about.

I will endeavor to learn more about the current KPLC shareholding structure, but last year it was reported that “Mama Ngina” Kenyatta had come into a few million shares (just over 1/1000 of the total).

According to the KPLC website, the Government of Kenya now owns 50.1, up from the 40.421 as of June 2009 testified to in Parliament in 2010.

Kenya Omo Soap

Since the 2007 election debacle, pervasive hunger has continued to grow in Kenya, while China and the United States promote and backstop the power of leaders who do not care enough

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The population of Kenya has grown roughly 25% since my year “promoting democracy” in 2007-08, from around 40 million to around 50 million. These are loose numbers because they do not reflect anything that is of the highest priority for Kenya’s leaders (and thus those outsiders who promote and underwrite Kenya’s leaders).

Kenya is to conduct a census this year, but the process is politically contentious and corruption makes it hard to carry off undertakings of this nature (another area where the United States seems to be moving toward convergence with Kenya recently). And there is always a new gambit, like “Huduma Namba” that comes along, with the help of Kenya’s politically-connected corporates and foreign corporate foundations, to get in the way of the core functions of the Government of Kenya, like conducting the census.

Unfortunately, although the size of the economy has continued to grow hunger has increased and Kenya remains a “middle income” country where the majority of citizens are inadequately fed. Agricultural performance has actually declined rather than merely grown at an insufficient pace as experienced in many other sectors.

Please take time to read this report from the Daily Nation’ Newsplex: “Poor planning and inaction to blame for food insecurity” There are a lot of important facts and figures, but here is a key summary of where things stand:

But despite the decline in the undernourishment rate, which is, however, higher than Africa’s 20 percent, the prevalence of severely food-insecure Kenyans jumped four percentage-points from 32 percent in 2014 to 36 percent in 2017, resulting in Kenya’s ranking as the eighth-worst on the indicator globally.

Yes, Kenya continues to have a problem with employment as a whole and the failure of the various power generation schemes over the years has been one factor for Kenya’s reliance on imports rather than it’s own manufacturing. But the decline of agriculture is the more immediate and inexcusable problem–and would be much easier to address if it were prioritized–as opposed to yet another questionable power generation scheme.

Follow-up: in which Amb. McCarter and I experience some downsides of “Twitter diplomacy”

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In my last post, I explored the fact that Ambassador Kyle McCarter is the United States’ first Ambassador to Kenya to come from a background in elective politics. Because he had just done what seemed to be a well-received television interview I added in introductory material to the original draft to reflect that.

In the aftermath of following the interview with an invitation for questions on Twitter, the Ambassador got drawn into the Kenyan controversy about the Chinese-Kenyan Amu Power coal plant proposed for the Lamu area on the Coast. My sense is that he seemed to respond to a Kenyan political and legal controversy as a politician would in asserting his own opinion and judgment based on his own experience and positions–an easy thing to do on Twitter–in a quite different way than a diplomat would normally react.

In the context of following this discussion, I did a bit of quick updating on the internet of the status of the coal mining industry in Sen. McCarter’s former State Senate district in Illinois. By coincidence I spent some time visiting in the area as a young lawyer back in the 1990s and knew that at that time there was a perception of economic strain associated with a decline in local mining employment. After going through some history of mining, I found a recent article in a local newspaper about a young mayor of a town in the area responding to the economic circumstances by promoting solar energy in his immediate community. I shared the article with the Ambassador and a Kenyan leader on the citizen fight against corruption in the power generation and resale businesses in Kenya (as opposed to an anti-coal activist or someone otherwise involved in the Lamu case).

The Ambassador responded tartly that coal provided 95% of the power in his region in Illinois, he knew the mines and plants, and that coal was the cleanest and cheapest approach to needed power in the context of the highest environmental standards in the world. Further, he was not inclined to be persuaded by “well paid activists” and that “facts are stubborn things.”

This furthered an impression–hopefully not intended–that the Ambassador was weighing in on the Kenyan legal and policy controversy about the Chinese-Kenyan Amu Power deal.

The next day, the Kenyan court finally issued its ruling that the Amu permit for the Lamu plant had been improperly granted without a meaningful, legally adequate environmental review. From the outside, as a casual observer with a background in Kenyan policy making and the history of these large projects, along with awareness of the established record of corruption in the Kenyan power sector, this looked to me like a straightforward victory for the rule of law in Kenya. The sort of thing we say we want and that USAID and the State and Justice Departments and others have been spending our money on.

Likewise, this generated pushback form “Kenyans on Twitter” who felt patronized or insulted, as well as those who have a different view on “macro” issues relating to power generation and environmental issues than they interpreted the Ambassador to have Tweeted. As for me, I had just intended to share an interesting recent news article, without comment, and not to get under anyone’s skin, or debate the philosophy of coal economics in the global context.

Kenya Lama donkey and cannon on waterfront seawall on harbor

One thing is certain with active Twitter use: all of us who Tweet actively will “step in it” sometimes. The Ambassador well knows this because his ultimate voice vote confirmation in the Senate was held up for some months in apparent reaction to a few previous Tweets that generated push back and follow-up. The Ambassador is also representing the United States and has a professional communications staff of public servants to help him.

As Kenya turns: watch as the Chris Murungaru Anglo Leasing suit against John Githongo heads toward Supreme Court—“feeding the pig of corruption”

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Kenya has had that one widely accepted successful presidential election out of six in the multiparty era following the end of the Cold War. The 2002 “Kibaki Tosha” “National Alliance Rainbow Coalition” election has remained the taproot of mythology about Kenyan democracy in the United States to this day, nearly seventeen years later.

The 2002 succession of Moi, with the young Uhuru Kenyatta left to wait his turn, serving as Leader of the Opposition, then Deputy Prime Minister during Kibaki’s two administrations, was supposed to have ushered in an actual spirit of multiparty competition and higher-minded, cleaner governance that was missing as long as Moi was still in State House himself even though he had grudgingly agreed to change the law for the 1992 election to allow non-KANU parties.

The pick up and continuation of the Anglo Leasing national security looting scheme in spite of the turnover from Moi to Kibaki contradicted the myth and was egregious enough to risk the support of State Department diplomats for Kibaki’s re-election. When I arrived in Kenya in mid-2007 I inherited democracy assistance programs that reflected U.S. disappointment in the Kibaki Administration’s corruption as reflected in the Anglo Leasing scandal, which had been sharply and publicly criticized by the previous U.S. Ambassador and British High Commissioner. But the programs had been established back under the previous Ambassador more than a year-and-a-half earlier.

By the eve of the 2007 election the worm had turned:

This is from my Freedom of Information Act Series on on the 2007 election:

Getting back to the narrative, I also remember Tuesday, December 18, 2007, the date that Ranneberger wrote the second of the cables that I received recently through a 2009 FOIA request.

That morning’s Standard featured a big, full page exclusive interview with Ambassador Ranneberger, nine days before the election.  For me this article was something of a benchmark in terms of my instructions to take “no more b.s.” from the Ambassador.  There are several reasons I found the article troubling, part related directly to the independence of  our IRI election observation mission, and part related to the Kenyan campaign itself,  in particular the corruption issue.  On corruption:

[From“Envoy Predicts Free and Fair Election”, The Standard,December 18, 2007–an interview with U.S. Ambassador Michael Ranneberger nine days before the Kenyan election]

Q: What are your views on corruption?

A:Lots of people look at Kenya and say lots of big cases have not been resolved because of Anglo Leasing and Goldenberg. I always point out that we have lots of corruption even in the US. These cases take a lot of time to bring to justice. We had the famous Enron case. It took over four years to resolve in a system that works efficiently, yet only a couple of people were convicted. These things take a long time.

There has been substantial effort to fight corruption in Kenya and the award the country won for Civil Service reform [from the World Bank] is a pointer to that effect. The fact that the Civil Service is more professional than ever before is progress as are the new procurement laws recently put in place and the freedom of the Press to investigate and expose corruption. More, of course, needs to be done.

The economy has grown by 7 per cent. How much of that has actually trickled down to the people will again be determined by time.

A career diplomat, Ranneberger has been in Kenya for close to one-and-a-half years, and has served in Europe, Latin America and Africa.

During previous days The Standard had been running new revelations about corruption in the Kibaki administration from documents from exiled former Permanent Secretary for Ethics and Governance  John Githongo. Rumor had it that Githongo wanted to be able to return to Kenya and might want to be able to return to government after the election, although I had no knowledge one way or the other about whether that was true. Githongo’s personal adventure trying to address corruption in the Kibaki administration is the subject of Michela Wrong’s It’s Our Turn to Eat. Wrong rightly noted in her book that stealing the election was the ultimate corruption.

Githongo had previously alleged that the Anglo Leasing scandal that Ranneberger referred to was intended to fund the campaign to re-elect Kibaki. See this from BBC News, January 26, 2006, “Kenya ‘safe’ for anti-graft czar”:

On Wednesday, the World Bank urged Kenya’s president to take tough action against any cabinet ministers found to be corrupt.

The warning came as the World Bank approved a new $25m loan to help fight corruption – a decision slammed by former UK Kenya envoy Sir Edward Clay.

Sir Edward, who has condemned Kenya for not tackling graft, said the new loan would feed the “pig of corruption”.

‘Insensitive’

”The Anglo-Leasing cases represent an excellent opportunity for the authorities to invoke the disciplinary provisions of the code of conduct signed by the new cabinet weeks ago,” said World Bank Kenya director Colin Bruce.

“I believe that this is an historic moment for the government to signal where it stands on the issue of political accountability,” he said.

President Kibaki is under increasing pressure over corruptionPresident Kibaki was elected in 2002 on a pledge to fight corruption.

Some donors, including the UK, have suspended some aid to Kenya over concerns about corruption and Sir Edward, who retired last year, thought the World Bank should have sent out a tough message.“How can the World Bank be so insensitive and hapless to announce new loans to Kenya?” reports the Guardian newspaper.

“They have added insult to injury by feeding the pig of corruption in Kenya when many Kenyans were beginning to hope they might smell the bacon beginning to fry.”

Over the weekend, Mr Githongo’s leaked report said his attempts to investigate the Anglo-Leasing scandal were blocked by four top ministers – Vice-President Moody Awori, Energy Minister Kiraitu Murungi, Finance Minister David Mwiraria and sacked Transport Minister Chris Murungaru.

Mr Murungi and Mr Awori have publicly denied the claims.

Mr Murungi said the report was “untrue” and an attempt to bring down the government.

Mr Githongo resigned last year amid reports that his life had been threatened.

The money raised by the alleged scam was to be used to fund the ruling Narc coalition’s campaign in elections due next year, Mr Githongo said.

Following the leaking of the 31-page report, the opposition has urged President Kibaki to dissolve cabinet.

Opposition Orange Democratic Movement leader Uhuru Kenyatta said: “This is clear evidence that the government can no longer be trusted to conduct detailed and honest investigations into this saga.”

Other diplomats were maintaining effective “radio silence” in the sensitive closing days of the 2007 campaign, while Ranneberger was speaking out to defend the Kibaki administration’s corruption record. In the meantime, after my December 15 experience at the Embassy residence I was quietly preparing the new last-minute pre-election Langata survey, along with all the other work for the exit poll and Election Observation Mission.

After reading the Standard article, I e-mailed my local USAID officer on the Election Observation and Exit Poll to complain, noting my opinion about the article and where things seemed to be going in regard to my obligation to supervise an objective and independent Observation Mission and the Ambassador’s alternative approach.

Part One;   Part Two;    Part Three;    Part Four;    Part Six;    Part Seven;   Part Eight;  Part Nine;  Part Ten

So by December 2007, we had the U.S. Ambassador having pivoted to the role of offering apologetics for Anglo Leasing in the context of Kibaki’s re-election.

At some point after the election debacle I was asked to submit to my Washington office names for IRI to send to an international women’s leadership event and we passed along a current MP and Njoki N’dungu who had an NGO and who had been a member of the Ninth Parliament from 2002-2007. Shortly afterward I was informed by a diplomatic source that N’dungu was “closely connected” to Chris Murungaru of the Anglo Leasing matter. Reporting to Washington it was agreed that the invitation would not have been made had we realized this problem in time.

Today, Uhuru Kenyatta is in his sixth year as president and has in effect adopted Anglo Leasing by paying out more millions on the bogus procurements over the years while notional prosecutions languish. Githongo continues to be subject to nasty tribalist attacks from jingoists for revealing admitted truths that were embarrassing to purported tribal leaders, including from one pundit who may have received some Western support in 2013 while pushing his tribal election theories to demonstrate that the opposition could not compete with UhuRuto.

Today, corruption is worse–no surprise there– but the World Bank is stepping in again, with $75M. The local World Bank Director Colin Bruce was right back when the Anglo Leasing scandal broke that it was “an historic moment for the government to signal where it stands on the issue of political accountability”. The Government of Kenya was quite clear and remains so–it is Kenya’s donors that have twisted and contorted to avoid hearing.

Today, Githongo has a new personal judgment against him for defamation for the leaked publication of his work as Permanent Secretary in trying to “stop these thieves” and protect the Kenyan government and public from looting and insecurity. He is appealing and Kenyans are raising funds to support the appeal.

Today, N’dungu is Justice on the Supreme Court. (She will need to recuse herself from any involvement in the Murungaru versus Githongo matter.)

I have to shake my head in remembering the window back about a decade ago when the U.S. and other Western donors were vocally backing what we called “the reform agenda” and USAID even got involved in supporting the National Council of Churches of Kenya in using the Michela Wrong book, It’s Our Turn to Eat, to teach against corruption.

Now we have a new Ambassador, the fourth since Anglo Leasing broke to the public. As I have written I have a sense that he wants to help change the dynamic on corruption in Kenya. He can make progress if he makes the sacrifices necessary but he does have to realize it will be much harder than it would have been back in 2007 or at so many other turning points in the past and that pushback will come from places other than Kenya.

Update: be sure to read Rasna Warah’s “In Whose Interest? Reflecting on the High Court Ruling Against John Githongo” in The Elephant’s East African Review.

Is Washington finally losing patience with governance by UhuRuto? If so, what is seen as “the way forward”?

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I touched a few bases while briefly in Washington recently. I was left with the impression of general “benign neglect” on Kenya, which would be expected given the overwhelming number of more immediate crisis situations around East Africa, such as the South Sudan “civil war/state failure” situation, escalating tensions between the Kagame and Museveni regimes, the uncontained Ebola crisis, etc. And always the war in Somalia.

Nonetheless, there are those who work or engage with Kenya more specifically on a less seasonal basis who will unavoidably have noticed how badly the Government of Kenya has been underperforming just as a factual matter regardless of the diplomatic angles of the day.

All this is to lay the groundwork for my great interest in a couple of news items today:

1). First was the report that Ambassador McCarter had said in Kisimu that the U.S. was putting on hold financing for the Bechtel Mombasa-Nairobi expressway due to concerns about corruption risk and debt levels escalating costs such that the intended value to the Kenyan people was not delivered. Here is the version from “Kenyans.co.ke” which has been running a bunch of pieces bringing up events from political inflection points from years past with no specific explanation of the timing, such as the piece I posted about last week taken off from my June 2017 piece in The Elephant on “The Debacle of 2007: How Kenyan Politics was Frozen and a Election Stolen with U.S. Connivance“.

As a private American “friend of Kenya” and taxpayer I am quite gratified by this willingness to change policy to address current “facts on the ground” and to actually “walk the talk” on “anti-corruption” even if it involves possibly giving up a big subsidized project for a very big well-connected private business owned by a group of Americans.

I have been concerned about this project for the reasons identified by the Ambassador but have not wanted to say much without being close enough to have details and not wanting to be seen as an inveterate naysayer or unduly skeptical about things where I am not that well informed.

Maybe Ambassador McCarter can end up being a “breath of fresh air” and is actually serious in his talk of zero tolerance for corruption in a way that would be different from the ordinary diplomacy where we run hot-and-cold at best. If no one explained to him as a political appointee from outside Washington that “zero” among diplomats ends up as shorthand for a wide range of dollar values in varying circumstances explained in the addendums and codicils, as opposed to just “zero” as it might mean to a businessman in downstate Illinois, then maybe Kenyan cartel leaders need to be worried a bit after all?

And if people in Washington have their hands full or are not focused on the immediate situation in Kenya, and with what we read about how national security policy management is working in Washington these days, it may well be that McCarter has that much greater practical latitude “on the ground”? Likewise, usually an Ambassador in Kenya will have the potential distraction of career considerations not dissimilar to people working in the government in Washington; this would not seem to be a challenge for McCarter. (And maybe he isn’t looking to be a lobbyist for a neighboring warlord in a black hat, and an oil and gas consultant and an investor-broker in USAID-funded health business, for instance.)

There are obvious sociocultural and political barriers to how McCarter will be perceived in Washington and among Americans who typically engage with foreign policy on Kenya or are “Kenyanists” or “Africanists” with focus on Kenya, but open minds are warranted. And maybe that works both directions.

Part of what is so striking here is how much Uhuru Kenyatta has in the past seemed to be arguably “Donald Trump’s signature African leader”–not so much that they are seen to really know each other or have some personal rapport, but rather that in the face of general lack of signs of personal interest in Africa from Trump we still have Uhuru at least included in meetings and doing photo ops with Trump in Europe, Canada and Washington, if not yet Mar-a-Lago, during the first two years of the Administration. Even though he was such a favorite of some in the Bush-Obama years.

So surely putting the Bechtel deal on hold suggests that there is finally heightened willingness to openly acknowledge that governance is simply not now what it was cracked up to be from our previous public diplomacy in recent years.

2) Next is Macharia Gaitho in the Daily Nation publishing today’s column: “Either rebels in Jubilee ranks join opposition, or Uhuru steps down” calling out Jubilee’s divide:

The politicians who contrive to insert his name [Deputy President Ruto’s] into every issue do the DP no favours at all. It does not help his image or his 2022 presidential election prospects when his name is used to fly cover for disreputable leaders caught on the wrong side of the law.

. . . .

As an elected member in his own right, a Majority Leader [Sen. Kipchumba Murkomen] does owe a duty to his constituents. Where conflicted, however, he could consult internally within the government and party organs.If his concerns are not adequately addressed, then the honourable thing would be to relinquish the Majority Leader role so that he can, in good conscience, speak out for his people both inside and outside Parliament.

As it is, what we are seeing from Mr Murkomen’s now frequent outbursts are the hallmark of rebellion. This is rebellion not from one disaffected individual, but a powerful Ruto faction in Jubilee that is unhappy with the path pursued by President Kenyatta.

Jubilee cannot govern effectively when it has such a powerful opposition within; hence the rudderless, dysfunctional government seemingly sabotaging its own efforts.

This is not a healthy situation. Maybe, it would be best for Mr Ruto and his cohorts to resign and go officially into opposition or for President Kenyatta to throw up his hands in surrender and leave the burden of leadership to those more able.

Now I don’t know and haven’t asked, but there have been recent times when Gaitho has seemed to be carrying a message, such as the time when he explained that Raila’s fellowship at Yale was intended to be a perk to ease into a honorable retirement, not a springboard to run yet again in 2017. Different Kenyan columnists are in this role at different times it has seemed over the years. See “Six years an Ambassador: Godec’s Kenya valedictory with Macharia Gaitho”.

This background made me figuratively “perk up my ears” when I read the Gaitho blast after the news on the Bechtel expressway deal.

As a practical matter, there are certain ironies any time it is suggested that “regular order” of some type is suddenly warranted in Kenyan politics. Uhuru Kenyatta himself as KANU leader and Leader of the Opposition in 2007, crossed the aisle to support “Kibaki Tena” without resigning, when party godfather, retired President Moi who picked Uhuru from relative obscurity to nominate as his successor in 2002, realigned his fortunes, so to speak, to be with Kibaki while being appointed as Kibaki’s diplomatic representative for Southern Sudan. So I think Ruto might scoff at Gaithos’s advice now, and I doubt Uhuru’s mother would be good with him resigning at this point with all the family has going on at stake. Too much water under the bridge for too many years to expect anyone “in government” to go formally into “opposition” voluntarily–reform can happen but not nearly so easily or cheaply.

A necessary and complimentary read is the latest from Rasna Warah in the East African Review with what needed to be said on the most egregious act of contempt toward what we used to call “the reform agenda”: “In whose interest? Reflecting on the High Court judgment against John Githongo?”

Kenya 2007 election Kibaki Tena Kazi iendelee re-election

Battle over Kenyan election corruption has commenced with vote in Parliament to ban the French vendor OT-Morpho/IDEMIA

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IDEMIA f/k/a OT-Morpho before a name change (and previously Safran Morpho before the French defense conglomerate sold this division to the French technology group Oburthur Technologies in a transaction closed shortly before August 2017 Kenyan election) has been a fixture of the past two Kenyan elections.

I have written about issues involving these procurements numerous times over the years and am continuing my engagement with the USAID Freedom Of Information office in their review and processing of public information from USAID support to the Kenyan IEBC in the 2013 election, from my request in 2015. (So far they have processed and released or withheld about half of the records sent from Nairobi to Washington by early 2016. They continue to assure me that they are working away at this.)

See: Kenya Election FOIA news: [heavily redacted] Election Assistance agreement shows U.S. paid for failed Results Transmission system.

Election Assistance FOIA update: disappointed to see from USAID records that IFES was supporting Kenya IEBC/Kenyatta-Ruto defense of 2013 election petition by civil society and opposition.

Nigeria example shows why U.S. and other donors should act now on election technology procurement fraud.

USAID Inspector General should take a hard look at Kenya’s election procurements supported by U.S. taxpayers

Last July IDEMIA dismissed without explanation a defamation suit it had filed against Raila Odinga and other NASA coalition leaders in April 2018 shortly after Raila’s “handshake” with Uhuru ended high level political contention over problematic KIEMS system IDEMIA had sold the IEBC in March 2017. The court records I reviewed indicted a unilateral dismissal rather than a settlement.

The judgment of the Supreme Court in the 2013 election petitions of AfriCOG and the opposition found that there was evidence of procurement fraud with the failed technology acquisitions, and ordered an investigation, but the IEBC, Kenyan prosecutors and donors all failed on that account. OT-Morpho, n/k/a IDEMIA once again was chosen in an opaque and controversial procurement process for the bigger 2017 “integrated” system. (I was told by the USAID press office that USAID did not finance the KIEMS purchase for the IEBC for 2017.)

But finally today, reports the Daily Nation, “For credible elections, MPs vote to block Huduma Namba firm“:

Members of the National Assembly voted on Wednesday to block technology firm IDEMIA Securities from doing business in Kenya for at least 10 years, citing violation of the Companies Act.

The move complicates the ongoing Huduma Namba registration, as the contract was awarded to the French firm at Sh6 billion.

. . . .

The MPs amended the report of the House Committee on Public Accounts on the audited accounts of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), to have the technology firm held accountable for irregular payments it received during the 2017 general elections.