On stepping aside.

In Kenya, as in the world over where there is a functioning government with a half-decent bureaucracy, you are worth how much you control. Cabinet Secretary Rotich is worthiest of them all because he collects the national revenue and he decides who gets what portion of it and at what time. Cabinet Secretary Waiguru is the second worthiest of them all because all the departments and agencies she heads or oversees collectively account for the largest portions of what Cabinet Secretary Rotich allocates. Then, jointly, Cabinet Secretaries Nkaissery and Omamo come next because large portions of their allocations from Cabinet Secretary Rotich are secret and secretive because, well, "national security." And so on and so forth.

The difference between Kenya and all those other bureaucracies in which fiscal dick-measuring is a national sport is that in Kenya, regardless of the billions under ones charge, the aim is never the improvement of the lives of the people but the amassing of political power and the erection of cults of personality - and white elephants. Corruption, that beast, is a natural byproduct of the system that sees the people as a nuisance who are obstacles to the political glory that so many billions of shillings guarantee to the one who controls the billions.

Those sad sacks forced to "step aside" are not sad that they have been prevented from serving the people; they are pissed that someone else has a chance to play with their billions. At that level, it is no longer "public funds"; at that level it is "my" money, com hell or high water. For those "stepping aside" this is the high water rushing towards their citadels. They must wish they had robust canoes right about now to ride the waves and, crucially, keep an eye on their billions lest some wacko make off with more than a modest share.

Let us not pretend that we want the next guy to look out for the mwananchi; we wish we were the next guy so that we could do exactly what the ones "stepping aside" were doing with those billions.We want the chance to direct the "implementation of key projects in the Jubilee manifesto" because, (a) it will give us political clout, and (b) our asses will never have to work ever again once those "projects" have been "successfully implemented", success being a highly fungible concept at that level. The loudest mourner at this funeral, louder than the actual bereaved, wishes he were asked to "act" for the dearly departed for a bit. That would be you, me and the cat next door.

So let us expect that our outrage at the audacity of the ones stepping aside for their perfidy to abate in a week, our attention to be diverted by another million-shilling bed and the well-appointed buttocks that will lay, or get laid, in it, and the collective imagination of the nation to be captured by the highs and laws of the Barclays English Premier League at which point our fearless Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission will complete its "investigations", the Director of Public Prosections will bewail the shocking shoddiness of the investigations, those stepping aside will make a triumphal return (no donkeys will be involved like with the Son of Man) and all will be corruptly right with the world.