Kenya should borrow some anti-graft lessons from Denmark

What you need to know:

  • Our government has put all the necessary measures in the fight against corruption and yet we haven’t achieved much.

  • Our greatest undoing is the culture that is engraved in our minds that giving and receiving bribes is normal.

  • This is a culture that we need to shed off in order to win the war on corruption.

Every nation, like every person, has its own weaknesses. It’s the acknowledgement of such weakness that a country can start working around finding an antidote.

In Kenya, one of the many weaknesses we have that poses the greatest threat to our national well-being is corruption. It is the reason a majority of our people are poor, die young, and why a good portion of the population is not well educated.

Corruption not only affects the efficiency and quality of the public administration, but also slows the economy as more efforts and resources are diverted to deal with the vice.

KEEN ANALYSIS

One country, however, found an effective way of dealing with than self-destroying malady.

Denmark was ranked the least corrupt country in the world for the eighth time in 2013 by Transparency International in their Corruption Perception Index (CPI and Kenya will be well advised to borrow a few lessons from this great nation.

Denmark dates its war against corruption back to 1860 under the leadership of King Fredrik VII. The king was annoyed by how state officers were stealing from the nation coffers and decided to put a stop to the vice.

He introduced a penal code that stated that it was a criminal offence to accept bribes. This was practiced for some time. However, after a keen analysis the king realised that corruption would not be eliminated only by introducing repressive laws!

OMBUDSMAN OFFICE

He introduced new reforms.

The reforms included increasing the salary of state officers with a good pension as low salary was often used as an excuse to accept bribes. He also urged the media to expose corruption cases and enhanced audits to take charge of State accounts and papers.

In Denmark the success of these reforms is attributed to a number of issues beside adaptation of the same by the community.

Danes cherish modesty and politicians in Denmark are role models. They also boast of a robust office of the Ombudsman with powers to investigate even the executive!

POLITICAL PARTIES

The epitome of Danish modesty could be found in the person of the former president of the United Nations General Assembly, Mogens Lykketoft. He used to ride his bicycle every day to his office between 2011 and 2015 when he was the speaker of Folketing (Danish Parliament).

Secondly, the state funds political parties and the election campaigns from the which keeps political parties away from favour seekers.

Additionally, the society has maintained the culture of social trust which has led to low levels of abuse of power in politics and business, marginal rates of secret dealings and bribery and high levels of transparency within the public sector

BORNE FRUIT

President Uhuru Kenyatta has been in the forefront fighting corruption which is envisioned in our Constitution by the formation of several organs to create checks and balances in the government. Even as he leads in the fight against graft, the political class is still lagging behind and with little goodwill.

Just like the case of Denmark, our Constitution has put in place institutions like the office of Ombudsman, Salaries and Remuneration Commission, free media and others like the Office of the Auditor General to create the checks and balances.

This has borne some fruits. However, as a country we still have a long way to go.

Our greatest undoing is the culture that is engraved in our minds that giving and receiving bribes is normal. This is a culture that we need to shed off in order to win the war on corruption.

TRANSPARENCY

Having established a Witness Protection Agency to protect whistle blowers on corruption, we could consider amending the law to adopt America’s Federal False Claims Act which permits persons with knowledge of fraud to file a lawsuit on behalf of the government against the person or business that committed the fraud. The success of the suit then rewards the person a percentage of the recovery. 

This will encourage everyone to be on the watch out for corruption which in turn will increase accountability and transparency in government.

Our government has put all the necessary measures in the fight against corruption and yet we haven’t achieved much. As Kenyans we therefore have a responsibility to change our mentality on giving and receiving bribes for us to fully eliminate graft just the way the Danish community did.

Mr Cherambos comments on social issues. [email protected]