election focus

with the elections around the corner, and with the political elite in the mood of starting to unleash handouts to peasants the narrative as wew approach to the elections must be "development" defined as mammoths harambee in which huge stocks of bank notes are ostentatiously displayed before bewildered rural dwellers.

the elite prefer to deal with peasants who respond to their benevolence and to politics of patronage nobody questions the source of the money even when the leader's name has only recently been in the news in connection with corruption scandals.

We in kenya do not get enraged about corruption, we only become enraged when the fruits of corruption and patronage are not shared according to our expectations and when the public officials being bounded for corruption are not from our tribe.in this country as in the rest of africa people seel political power not to implement programs to benefit the society but but to handout benefits in form of jobs and lucrative contracts to their relatives, tribesmen and their political allies.

Do we have any political party that represents competing ideas and policies for the future? NO ,what we have are structures created by the elite for the purpose of exploring state resources for members of their ethnic communities.

fighting graft is difficult in this country because of symbiotic relationships between corruption and competition for political power,we have multiple institutions that form our integrity system and infrastructure including the ethics and anti corruption commission ,the auditor general,the judiciary, the public procurement authority and parliamentary committees but the tradition away from entrenched corruption has been hampered by the absence of robust political competition. The basic cause of corruption in this country is politics of patronage.