Human rights and anti-corruption groups have accused the government of paying only lip service to the war on corruption. They say Kibaki's government, elected on a platform of zero tolerance on corruption, has nothing to show for - three years after coming to power.
"There has been a complete lack of political will, a total lack of commitment on the part of the government to uproot graft in this country. The people who were implicated in major corruption scandals are still key personalities in high-level civil service. Nothing is new. These people are still in office. They have not been touched,'' Maina Kiai, chairman of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, told IPS. The organisation is an autonomous institution set up by the government.
According to Kiai, the government should have suspended all the top civil servants implicated in corruption scandal.
Senior ministers in Kibaki's government have been mentioned in some of the major scams that have rocked the East African nation, including the Anglo-Leasing passport deal.
Unearthed early 2004, the Anglo-Leasing scandal involved two contracts that were illegally awarded to a company called Anglo-Leasing and Finance. The first deal involved the installation of new terrorist-proof passport printing equipment. The second entailed the establishment of modern forensic laboratories for the criminal investigation department.
Later it turned out that Anglo-Leasing and Finance, now popularly referred to as Anglo-Leasing, was a dubious company. The firm received payments amounting to about 90 million dollars for the two contracts.
The scandal sparked fury from western envoys, including former British ambassador to Kenya, Edward clay, who noted that corruption had cost the country an estimated 192 million dollars in the first 18 months of the Kibaki regime.
As calls for the suspension and subsequent investigation of two ministers implicated in the Anglo-Leasing scandal heightened, the government maintained that action was being taken. Only permanent secretaries in the ministries implicated in the scandal were sacked following investigations by the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC).
David Mwiraria, the minister for finance, and Chris Murungaru, former internal security minister, continued to exonerate themselves from blame, and remained in office despite mounting pressure for them to resign.
"Investigations were carried out and there was no evidence to show that the ministers were guilty," Nicholas Simani, senior public relations officer at KACC, told IPS.
Established in 2003 to investigate cases of corruption, KACC lacks prosecutorial powers. It forwards all cases to the Attorney General for prosecution, something which has made it to be perceived as having no teeth.
Some 3,234 complaints of alleged corruption cases, including those involving the Anglo-Leasing fiasco, were received by the commission between July 1, 2004 and June 30, 2005. In the same period, the commission forwarded 35 files to the Attorney General, of which 23 have been recommended for prosecution and 12 for closure, according to a 2004/2005 KACC report.
The report says 120 corruption prosecutions, including those involving Anglo-Leasing, are pending before court.
"Processes within the judiciary system are time consuming, such that the public gets impatient when they do not hear about conclusion of these cases. Many times there are constitutional references on most of the cases. This makes the commission look like it is not doing its work, yet we have performed our duties as mandated by the (law). We have sent cases to the Attorney General for prosecution. What happens from there is beyond our control," Simani explained.
The commission has also fallen short of addressing another high-profile corruption scam popularly referred to as the Goldenberg scandal. Reason? It is still awaiting the release of a report of the Goldenberg Commission of inquiry appointed early 2003 to investigate the scandal. The commission concluded its work in February 2005.
The Goldenberg scandal occurred in the early 1990s during the regime of former president Daniel arap Moi. It involved a dubious export compensation arrangement of gold and diamonds, in which Kenya lost an estimated 600 million dollars.
Names of key figures in Moi's government came up during hearings conducted by the Goldenberg Commission. They included George Saitoti, who was then vice president and minister for finance. Saitoti is now the minister for education, science and technology in Kibaki's government.
Pressure has been mounting on the government to release findings and recommendations of the Goldenberg Commission. The findings were expected to have been handed over to the government in November.
Early December, chairman of the Law Society of Kenya, Tom Ojienda said he would launch a campaign to force the government to make public the report.
To him, the government's commitment to the war on graft would largely be measured by how it would handle the Goldenberg Commission's report.
The government maintains that it is still committed to fighting corruption and that it has made significant steps in its campaign.
''Such steps include the signing into law of the Public Procurement and Disposal Bill by president Kibaki recently. Under this law, all government contracts will have to be thoroughly scrutinised before procurement. With this law, a repeat of the Anglo-Leasing will not occur,'' a senior official at the ministry of justice, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told IPS. Kibaki signed the Bill into law in October 2005.
Critics say such a law may be inadequate. They want the office of the Permanent Secretary for Ethics and Governance, which was scrapped, to be reinstated. Kibaki created the office in 2003 when he named his first cabinet. John Githongo, founding director of Transparency International-Kenya, was appointed to the office, whose function was to advise the president on corruption matters.
Githongo quit his job early this year while on an official duty in Britain, citing lack of support from other government departments. He is still out of the country.
Githongo was never replaced and the office was disbanded when Kibaki appointed a new cabinet Dec. 7. The move has enraged anti-corruption crusaders. ''The removal of this office is a strong statement about the government's lack of commitment to fight graft in Kenya,'' Kiai remarked.