from: Ouko joachim omolo
The News Dispatch with Omolo Beste
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2013

Corruption cannot end in Kenya because it takes form of cartel, a formal (explicit) “agreement” among competing politicians. This is a condition where you use certain ethnic communities to help you ascend to power with promise that you will award and protect them.

In economic terminology, a cartel is a formal organization of producers and manufacturers that agree to fix prices, marketing, and production, especially in an oligopolistic industry, where the number of sellers is small (usually because barriers to entry, most notably startup costs, are high) and the products being traded are usually homogenous.

In Mexico for example, Mexican narcos are using Twitter, Facebook and other online tools to run drug business campaigns, post selfies, brag about their wealth and even target rivals.

Like any burgeoning business, Mexico’s drug cartels are using the web to conduct very successful public relations campaigns that put those of their counterparts in Colombia and Myanmar in the 1980s to shame.

They advertise their activities, they conduct public relations initiatives, and they have basically turned themselves into their own media company,” Antoine Nouvet from the SecDev Foundation.

It is very difficult to prevent because cartels are often systematic, deliberate and most importantly, covert. It involves high ranking people in the government. Kenya is ranked among the most corrupt countries in the world because of cartel.

Ministry of Defence tops this year Ethics and Anti-Corruption list of most corrupt state departments because of cartel. The Immigrations Department is on the spot again because of cartel.

For as little as Sh100,000 corrupt officials are promising that anyone, even people of dubious character, can get a birth certificate, a school leaving certificate, an identification card, a driving license and a Kenyan passport.

With this type of business, is why even though Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph ole Lenku sacking of 15 senior and middle-level Immigration officers for issuing IDs to illegal immigrants, this will never end corruption in this department.

That is why terrorists, drug traffickers, bogus traders and despots fleeing from justice in their countries or other jurisdictions can easily find their way in Kenya. That is why Kenya has been a victim of terror attacks on several occasions, often orchestrated by individuals with Kenyan identification documents.

Another example and indeed shameful scenario was the shadowy Artur brothers who spread their version of terror during former President Kibaki’s government. The duo reportedly carried documents identifying them as senior police officers.

Kibaki government knew this but because the deal had a connection with high ranking officials in government he could do nothing but to allow the brothers to operate deadly business in Kenya.

That is also why the Port of Mombasa is operating under the manipulation of vicious cartels which enjoyed levels of high political patronage which has made the Jubilee government’s struggle against corruption a daunting task in vain.

The cartels were honed into shape through years of one party patronage under President Moi where tenders at the port were awarded to businessmen who had contributed to the ruling party’s awesome war chest.

Even though today panic has gripped the cartels which succeeded the Moi networks, President Uhuru cannot crackdown on them because like Moi and Kibaki, he needs ther political support.

Uhuru cannot because many of them metamorphosed into the present ones whose loyalty until the March 4 General Election was to players in Kibaki government. The cartels, which were predominantly Asian, later mutated into indigenous networks that use their proximity to State House.

The cartels do not operate alone but bring on board senior managers at the Kenya Ports Authority who handle their paperwork by influence peddling and paying off any stubborn middle level managers who are at times dismissed from their jobs if they insist on due process.

The elevation of the Managing Director Mr Gichiri Ndua to the helm was a direct result of the power play in Kibaki government to continue the business and also to conceal any dubious deals within the port authority department.

It explains how at one point during the Kanu days, one of the leaders of one of the biggest cartels who operated as President Moi’s point man in the region was appointed Executive Chairman in a shameless strategy to raise funds for the party which was then reeling under the threat of opposition pressure.

Another cartel business is in land ministry. This is where land officers, lawyers, real estate agents and brokers are duping innocent Kenyans into buying non-existent land. It is where the well-organised fraudsters use existing deed plans — documents showing location and divisions on land — to tamper with records at the Lands ministry.

The cartel is behind the runaway cases of people buying land belonging to other people. The best example is that of the Syokimau demolitions that saw Kenyans lose millions of shillings in investments that never existed.

Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ
Tel +254 7350 14559/+254 722 623 578
E-mail omolo.ouko@gmail.comFacebook-omolo beste
Twitter-@8000accomole

Real change must come from ordinary people who refuse to be taken hostage by the weapons of politicians in the face of inequality, racism and oppression, but march together towards a clear and unambiguous goal.
-Anne Montgomery, RSCJ
UN Disarmament
Conference, 2002