Our damn job!

Graft assails the public administration of this country at every turn. The President has unequivocally declared a war on graft, but he faces hurdles at every turn. He started with his own office, but even there, there were obstacles. Removing them has been like pulling teeth: painful and tough. But he seems determined.

The Chief Justice has joined forces with the Inspector-General of Police to clean out the murk in the corridors of justice, attempting to streamline the process of dealing with traffic offences where the collaboration between the police and judicial officers has been blamed for the endemic corruption in the Judiciary and the police service.

But it is recent revelations of graft in county governments that have fired up the ire of the people. Wheelbarrows have been priced at over a hundred thousand shillings; social media accounts have been set up at a cost of millions of shillings; mobile phones have been purchased for twice their retail prices in the market; hospital supplies have been priced at rates that boggle the mind. It seems, as one wag put, that graft has been devolved with the devolution of the government. This brings up, every now and then, doubts about the viability of devolution.

Yet, the train has left the station. Devolution has advanced in fits and starts, but it has advanced all the same. What we face are the vestigial remnants of KANU-ism, a virulent resistant strain of corruption from the 1980s that simply defies the odds and keeps on keeping on. Many of the men and women overseeing the implementation of devolution in county governments are holdovers from the KANU era, having survived Mwai Kibaki's nascent reforms. Kenyans are determined to see devolution succeed and it is these holdovers who threaten the entire project.

Once you're in, you're in. We made the choice, consciously as voters, to ratify the draft harmonised constitution in 2010. We have no choice but to ensure that the scheme we chose for ourselves works for us. Keeping an eye on those we have elected to govern us to do their job without threatening the scheme is our responsibility and it is one we must take seriously if we are to make a better nation. It is not enough to mouth the platitudes that politicians spout every now and then.

This is the Information Age, and the information available to us is available as a right, not a privilege. Even with the retrograde provisions of the Official Secrets Act, we still have available to us information that is vital to protecting our democracy and our form of government. Few of us have the money to run recall elections, but that shouldn't stop us from holding our elected governments to account. While we can't simplify our relationship with our elected representatives to that of employer and employee, but we can demand certain things of them: probity, integrity and good judgment.

Things like overpriced wheelbarrows and curtains threaten to distract us from the tasks at hand, but if we are farsighted and committed to the big picture, we might yet succeed. If we play our roles as electors properly, we will surely come out of this transition period stronger and better. We must have faith in our institutions, enough faith for us to take hard decisions, such as foregoing the frisson of satisfaction we get by electing the men and women we have been familiar with for ages. If we elect the men and women who share our desire for development and good government, we shall be in with a chance. It is time for hard decisions. We can't foist it on future voters. This is our time and it is time we acted like we had damn sense!