How Jubilee defeated corruption after 56 years of failed attempts
Ndung’u Mburu
There is no country I’d rather live in than Kenya. Seriously! This is the only country in the region which is celebrating the end of corruption.
With the demonetisation of the old Sh1,000 note, the Jubilee government has, tactfully and successfully, eliminated corruption in the country.
It achieved the feat without jailing a single person or even giving an extension of the deadline to withdraw the old banknotes. What an achievement!
In fact, this requires applause, nay, a standing ovation. Wherever you are reading this article from, I humbly urge you to stop whatever you are doing, stand up, clap and ululate for Uhuru Kenyatta’s administration.
Wow! After 56 years of trying, this government — this one that won’t convict anyone over the NYS I or NYS II or Ruaraka land or the mobile clinics or the maize/NCPB or the Kenya Pipeline or the SGR/Land Commission scandals — is the one that has finally succeeded in absolutely eliminating the vice. How about that? I bet it can also make ostriches fly!
Anti-bribery
First of all, going by the number of messages the banks and government agencies sent in the run up to the deadline of the withdrawal of the notes, I am convinced that police officers will no longer ask me for a bribe on the road.
You see, it does not matter that Parliament won’t enact legislation that makes corruption a capital offense (they’d rather discuss whether women should get into the debating chamber with handbags — or babies).
What matters, is that the new currency has new anti-bribery features that make the bank notes fly back into your pocket if you try to bribe a government official.
Secondly, all those sign boards in government offices declaring “This is a corruption Free zone” will now start to make sense and will stop being fodder for scrap metal.
Corruption in government offices will now cost you nothing. Well, apart from Masaai Mara University.
Mariga’s case
Thirdly, can we all just take a moment to appreciate that this government said it would do something with money that did not involve borrowing it from China and actually followed through with the plan!
Am I the only one who is impressed here? I mean, the last time it tried to do that we ended up paying a bankrupt Italian company to build dams in our imagination and paid them some more for cancelling that contract!
Again, am I the one who thinks that, maybe, just maybe, this government is run by Jesus Christ himself?
Meanwhile, McDonald Mariga is still running for a parliamentary seat. Let that sink in.
The guy who can’t vote for himself is still in the race for the Kibra seat and — here’s the best part — he’s being fronted by the government.
The guy who was born in 1987 and cleared Form Four in 2002 is the latest project of the resourceful Jubilee administration. By the way, I was also born in 1987 and in 2002, I was in Form Two and I never repeated any class.
This means that I, either, have to review all of my life’s choices or this latest government project is about to become another “we’ll build 11 Football Stadia by December” saga.
To be fair, everybody in this country has the right to vie for any elective seat in any part of the country. Mariga, therefore, is very much in order to contest for a parliamentary seat in a constituency where he is not a registered voter.
It is also worth noting that Mariga is a perfect student. Having been fronted by the same party that promised life would get better after it got into power (LOL), the former footballer was busy assuring Kibra residents that he would ensure that the stock in their shops would be increased and car washes would have better machines if he got into Parliament.
You see, this is the perfect example of servant leadership. Stand on top of a six-million-shilling global warmer and promise old men bursaries to go to school. Verily, verily, I say unto thee, this is a government that believeth in miracles.- [email protected]
