Promises, promises.

We don't want honesty in our public officials; that would shatter the illusion under which we labour every day promises are not kept. If they told us the truth, we would never leave our homes. The nominee for Inspector-General of Police promises to fight graft. I wish he hadn't. The institution to which he has been nominated to lead is not swimming in the most honest of public officers. Indeed, never mind that aberrant ranking in 2009 on performance, it's legitimacy in the eyes of the people consistently plumbs the depths of despair. Its corruption is as certain as the celestial qualities of the Sun.

His predecessor promised to fight graft too. He lost that fight. Every police boss promises to fight graft when they come to office. They all lose the fight. It can be argued that the fight is lost when the appointing authorities have no interest in tackling graft; but I think that the fight is already lost when the people themselves have no interest in seeing victory. We deplore graft only because the majority of us are the givers of bribes, not the recipients. Ours is jealousy, not civic-mindedness. Our fantasies are about tenders and short-cuts to great wealth. When it is our turn to eat we eat with gusto and give our promises of probity the go-bye.

I wish the nominee had promised something more prosaic, like better housing for the men and women he would command. There is not much else he can provide them. He cannot promise them better terms and conditions of service; the monies Parliament is willing to appropriate for the police will remain paltry for a long time to come. He cannot promise them non-interference in the performance of their duties; every elected official, every civil servant and every private developer with an in with the powers-that-be will always demand special favours, with the police at the enforcement end of those favours. The only thing he can promise them, if he has the balls, is good housing, and all the graft that goes into big-ticket public infrastructure tenders.

The nominee comes to the National Police Service from the National Intelligence Service. Maybe he has the moxie to get one or two things right. However, if he thinks that the National Police is an extension of the counter-security arm of National Intelligence, then there are a few outcomes that will come as no surprise. For one, violent crime will not abate an graft will flourish. If he, however, sees policing for what it truly is, there may yet be salvation for the suffering peoples of Kenya. If he sees policing as a means for assuring the safety of the people by working in concert with all stakeholders including National Intelligence, county government and civil society, he may yet find that his fight against graft succeeding.

Successive police bosses have been unsuccessful in their duties because they have had the wrong kind of political cover from their appointing authority. So long as they have kept the political opposition in check, their jobs have been secure. That is a bygone era. With violent crime and terrorism rearing their ugly heads more and more, policing cannot be obsessed with politics to the exclusion of all else. If the appointing authority misses his second chance to properly support his Inspector-General, it is almost certain that an ignominious exit awaits his nominee and the cycle will have come full circle.