Kenyan Politics And The Presidential Campaign Kitty: Why Close Public Scrutiny Is Required This Time

One of the questions the Kenyan electorate must ask in the forthcoming election is how politicians and especially the leading presidential candidates raise cash for their campaigns. It has become very clear that campaigning for the presidency is an extremely costly affair.

Keen observers of the Kenyan political scene will have noted the sudden about-turn within ODM-Kenya (on the day our analysis of the issue appeared here) where leading presidential hopefuls are now clearly showing signs of agreeing on the party's presidential candidate via consensus rather than the intensive delegates system they have been so aggressively pushing for. The reason that they have given is that they fear infiltration by government agents. The truth is that the main reason has to do with finances and leading campaigners like Raila Odinga and the man who has pushed hardest for the impossible unviable system (Kalonzo Musyoka) have already started feeling the financial strain. This happening in late January when the elections are expected in December gives you an idea of how serious the problem is.

Kenyan voters now need to be very wary of these people who usually come from nowhere to announce that they are ready to finance a presidential campaign. Usually these people are shadowy unscrupulous businessmen who see the exercise as an investment that they will heavily cash in on when their candidate is safely in State House. Take the likes of Ephrahim Maina of the notorious Kirinyaga Construction company and one of the cowboy contractors Narc vowed will not be paid when they come to power. People like Raila Odinga were at the forefront of that wildly popular campaign in 2002.

But alas, the man was one of the businessmen and leading personalities from Nyeri who financed President Kibaki's campaign. So early in the Narc administration Raila turns up in Nyeri for a function and is surprised (he shouldn't have been) to find Ephrahim Maina there. Maina left only after Raila strongly voiced his objections to his presence. But that did not stop the contractor getting paid in full and even as you read this, a contract he was awarded by the Kibaki administration to complete repairs on the Nyeri-Sagana Road is yet to be done. And reports indicate that he has already been paid in full for the work.

It is highly likely that once again this generous man's name will appear amongst the people financing President Kibaki's re-election bid.

There is no such thing as free lunch and anybody volunteering to sponsor a presidential bid has an agenda, which needs to be scrutinized to ensure that it is above board.

Other candidates in Kenyan politics like Uhuru Kenyatta will rely heavily on family funds accumulated by the father (late founding president of Kenya Mzee Jomo Kenyatta), mainly from grabbed public land. This is one family that owns land the size of some provinces in Kenya. This corrupt source of campaign funds for the presidency must also be rejected by the electorate.

So how should a genuine presidential candidate raise campaign funds in the Kenyan political arena? They will need to get a lot more creative (after all we need a very creative person in State House this time to have a fighting chance of solving our long list of pressing problems) and they will need to rely mainly on the public that supports their candidature and their proposed policies. They will also need to cut down on their excessive budgets and instead get back to the basics of publicizing their agenda and policy proposals through the media in simple language that the electorate can understand and analyze.

If we are truly after a new government that will have zero tolerance for corruption then that long march must start with the issue of where our candidates are getting their campaign funds. There should be no compromise on this issue, if we truly want a clean up of Kenyan politics.

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