Post by miguna on Jan 29, 2006 2:58:59 GMT 3
Open letter to World Bank boss
Story by EDWARD CLAY /Sunday View
Publication Date: 01/29/2006
Dear Mr Wolfowitz,
Please excuse a direct letter to you. The matter of this e-mail is important. I expect my comment comes too late to get anything changed: That was no doubt the intention of the staff who announced on January 25 a decision to give US$199 million to Eastern African countries, of which US$120 million to Kenya, US$25 million of that allegedly in support of anti-corruption measures. I understand your Board may have approved this earlier in the week.
This sequence of events shows the Bank operating in a politically unaware way. I have become used to observing this. Bureaucracies like inertia to drag them on so that, if anyone can be bothered to object, it is too late to change a fait accompli. Those responsible can then wring their hands – or not – but say what is done cannot be undone. The decision, and the terms of the Bank's press release on January 26, are a particularly glaring example of how the Bank and donors collectively fail to grasp the nettle of corruption; and their instinct, when they do address it, to get things quite wrong.
The new loans to Kenya are announced while the Kenyan media are full of disclosures about this government's corruption. Those disclosures come from the most authoritative source imaginable: The man the President himself appointed to be his adviser on anti-corruption, Mr John Githongo. The President's failure to back up his own anti-corruption tsar and the efforts to obstruct his work by ministers drove Mr Githongo into exile nearly a year ago.
The burden of the effort to investigate the cases in the public arena falls almost entirely to the Director of the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC). In Githongo's absence, he and his staff carry the torch. The Director was reported last week to have summoned some senior ministers, including the Minister for Finance, to assist his inquiries.
The people whose support is crucial if the war on corruption is ever to be fought successfully are the politically savvy Kenyan public, served by their free media. Public interest is the moral basis sustaining the KACC's performance of their statutory duty. The evidence of what has been wrong is being laid bare by the media on a daily basis with brutal and unprecedented detail.
All Kenyans – high officials, lawyers, journalists, ordinary citizens – know the burden of the fight is theirs. They have the democratic means – good elections, a free media, a politically aware populace – to force their views on unpopular governments. They do not expect nor want the "donors'' to enforce change. They have the right, however, to expect that the foreign donors, who speak so often of governance but who have themselves been ineffectual in tackling it, will at least not discourage the efforts of Kenya's reformers, nor demoralise them.
Alas, the Bank repeated its past errors by blundering ahead with disbursements to Kenya without heed of the political background. The Bank has in effect entrusted loans worth US$120 million to one of the ministers expecting to be asked questions about major wrongdoing in government. What signal does that send? To observers like me it seems bound to discourage KACC: You have in effect set your judgement above theirs by carrying on as if there is nothing unusual in dealing with a minister who is believed to bear some responsibility for the current scandals. You appear to find it acceptable for someone in his position still to perform his ordinary functions.
To behave like that implicitly discounts the testimony of Mr Githongo and the significance of KACC's current investigations, although I imagine you do not want to undermine him. And you discourage the Kenyan people who will find your signal to the Government confusing. The Bank is like the caricature of the Church in 18th century France: A contemporary cartoon just before the Revolution showed the peasants staggering under the burdens of the world. The monarchy and aristocracy imposed most of those burdens. The Church is seen, in all its finery and privileges, standing by, leaning on the globe, adding to, not subtracting from the sufferings of the peasantry.
Is that the model for the Bank's role in eradicating poverty in Kenya? The faiths in Kenya are at least mostly vocal on the side of the poor. Maybe the World Bank should sharpen up its political awareness. If the Bank wishes to eschew interference in politics, it must avoid blind and offensive blundering of the sort demonstrated in respect of one of Africa's more corrupt development partners.
____________________________________________
Sir Edward Clay is a former British High Commissioner in Kenya
Story by EDWARD CLAY /Sunday View
Publication Date: 01/29/2006
Dear Mr Wolfowitz,
Please excuse a direct letter to you. The matter of this e-mail is important. I expect my comment comes too late to get anything changed: That was no doubt the intention of the staff who announced on January 25 a decision to give US$199 million to Eastern African countries, of which US$120 million to Kenya, US$25 million of that allegedly in support of anti-corruption measures. I understand your Board may have approved this earlier in the week.
This sequence of events shows the Bank operating in a politically unaware way. I have become used to observing this. Bureaucracies like inertia to drag them on so that, if anyone can be bothered to object, it is too late to change a fait accompli. Those responsible can then wring their hands – or not – but say what is done cannot be undone. The decision, and the terms of the Bank's press release on January 26, are a particularly glaring example of how the Bank and donors collectively fail to grasp the nettle of corruption; and their instinct, when they do address it, to get things quite wrong.
The new loans to Kenya are announced while the Kenyan media are full of disclosures about this government's corruption. Those disclosures come from the most authoritative source imaginable: The man the President himself appointed to be his adviser on anti-corruption, Mr John Githongo. The President's failure to back up his own anti-corruption tsar and the efforts to obstruct his work by ministers drove Mr Githongo into exile nearly a year ago.
The burden of the effort to investigate the cases in the public arena falls almost entirely to the Director of the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC). In Githongo's absence, he and his staff carry the torch. The Director was reported last week to have summoned some senior ministers, including the Minister for Finance, to assist his inquiries.
The people whose support is crucial if the war on corruption is ever to be fought successfully are the politically savvy Kenyan public, served by their free media. Public interest is the moral basis sustaining the KACC's performance of their statutory duty. The evidence of what has been wrong is being laid bare by the media on a daily basis with brutal and unprecedented detail.
All Kenyans – high officials, lawyers, journalists, ordinary citizens – know the burden of the fight is theirs. They have the democratic means – good elections, a free media, a politically aware populace – to force their views on unpopular governments. They do not expect nor want the "donors'' to enforce change. They have the right, however, to expect that the foreign donors, who speak so often of governance but who have themselves been ineffectual in tackling it, will at least not discourage the efforts of Kenya's reformers, nor demoralise them.
Alas, the Bank repeated its past errors by blundering ahead with disbursements to Kenya without heed of the political background. The Bank has in effect entrusted loans worth US$120 million to one of the ministers expecting to be asked questions about major wrongdoing in government. What signal does that send? To observers like me it seems bound to discourage KACC: You have in effect set your judgement above theirs by carrying on as if there is nothing unusual in dealing with a minister who is believed to bear some responsibility for the current scandals. You appear to find it acceptable for someone in his position still to perform his ordinary functions.
To behave like that implicitly discounts the testimony of Mr Githongo and the significance of KACC's current investigations, although I imagine you do not want to undermine him. And you discourage the Kenyan people who will find your signal to the Government confusing. The Bank is like the caricature of the Church in 18th century France: A contemporary cartoon just before the Revolution showed the peasants staggering under the burdens of the world. The monarchy and aristocracy imposed most of those burdens. The Church is seen, in all its finery and privileges, standing by, leaning on the globe, adding to, not subtracting from the sufferings of the peasantry.
Is that the model for the Bank's role in eradicating poverty in Kenya? The faiths in Kenya are at least mostly vocal on the side of the poor. Maybe the World Bank should sharpen up its political awareness. If the Bank wishes to eschew interference in politics, it must avoid blind and offensive blundering of the sort demonstrated in respect of one of Africa's more corrupt development partners.
____________________________________________
Sir Edward Clay is a former British High Commissioner in Kenya