Foreign Policy Digest: news, analysis and opinion

Our February 2010 Issue: Corruption

2010-03-02T01:37:06Z

This February, we at Foreign Policy Digest have focused on the global problem of corruption, defined by Transparency International (TI) as “the abuse of entrusted power for private gain.” Unfortunately, such abuse infiltrates all manner of activities, from national elections to international investment, from petty bribes for public officials to the funneling of millions of dollars of aid to anonymous bank accounts. As TI explains, “In the worst cases, corruption costs lives. In countless other cases, it costs their freedom, health, or money. It has dire global consequences, trapping millions in poverty and misery, while breeding social, economic and political unrest.”

Our feature articles this month examine the various forms corruption takes, the costs it imposes, and the efforts employed to counter its crippling effects.

Our Americas section contains a special contribution on Haiti from Kerry Kennedy, President and Founder of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial. Both Ms. Kennedy and Monika Varma, Director of the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights, emphasize the need for transparency and accountability in the international aid response to January's devastating earthquake, both to prevent corruption and to ensure that assistance is as effective as possible in addressing Haiti's humanitarian crisis. In a separate video interview conducted by FPD's Editor-in-Chief, Adam Benz, Ms. Varma offers additional insight into how the US can avoid past mistakes in the way it approaches aid to Haiti.

Also in the Americas, FPD columnist Teddy Kahn examines Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s dismissal of the central bank head for refusing to pay government debt out of the bank’s reserves. Such use of executive authority raises important questions regarding the connection between central bank independence and government transparency.

In Asia, World Bank consultant Fumiko Nagano writes about an Indian NGO that is distributing zero rupee notes to mobilize citizens to fight petty corruption: when an official asks for a bribe, citizens can give the zero rupee notes as a form of protest. This popular initiative has empowered thousands of citizens who now know that they are not alone in fighting institutionalized corruption.

In Africa, FPD highlights scandals in Kenya involving millions of dollars of missing public funds and evaluates progress against corruption in light of the country’s recent history. To provide perspective, FPD interviewed journalist Michela Wrong, who profiles the dramatic efforts of former anticorruption official John Githongo in her book, It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower.

The feature for the Europe/Russia section is written by Bronwen De Sena, who works on national security issues at the U.S. Congress. Ms. De Sena discusses the controversy surrounding Kazakhstan assuming chairmanship of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe. Amidst recent media crackdowns, election irregularities, and allegations of human rights rollbacks in Kazakhstan, can the OSCE credibly uphold its standards for accountability in allowing the country to lead the organization?

Meanwhile, in the Middle East, former East West Institute Director Justin McMahan examines the state of the Iranian opposition movement that arose in the wake of Iran's contested elections last summer, a contest he witnessed in person while traveling in Iran. Eight months later, McMahan also assesses international efforts to hold the regime accountable.

Each of these contexts emphasizes the critical roles played by individuals, governments, and international institutions in countering corruption in its various forms. We hope they encourage you to consider the impact your own work or personal efforts can have on fighting this pernicious, persistent global problem.

Katherine Southwick is the Africa Regional Editor for Foreign Policy Digest.

Fighting Corruption, One Zero-Rupee Note At A Time

2010-02-17T10:26:30Z

DEVELOPMENTS

Petty corruption is pervasive in India, where local officials demand bribes from ordinary citizens for the delivery of public services that should not cost a rupee. Reinforced by habit, these corrupt practices have become entrenched social norms that lead citizens to believe that bribery is not just normal, appropriate and acceptable, but expected. One Indian NGO, 5th Pillar, has launched a unique initiative to mobilize citizens in fighting petty corruption: the mass distribution of zero rupee notes to citizens who use them to protest bribery by public officials.

DEVELOPMENTS

BACKGROUND

Currently, the mainstream approach to anti-corruption efforts by the international community involves establishing a normative framework of recommendations for fighting corruption; requesting that countries ratify the framework; and assisting them in achieving these standards. The framework lists specific measures designed to help countries prevent and control corruption, such as the establishment of independent anti-corruption commissions, creation of transparent procurement and public financial management systems, and promotion of ethical codes of conduct for public officials. Although this work is important and necessary, the World Bank’s Communication for Governance and Accountability Program (CommGAP) suggests that there is a missing link in the global anti-corruption agenda: an understanding of norm generation and norm transformation vis-à-vis corruption. Only by generating widespread public intolerance of corruption can anti-corruption efforts make a real impact and produce sustainable change.

Indian NGO 5th Pillar and its zero rupee initiative emerged in CommGAP’s research on innovative approaches to change social norms about corruption. The zero rupee note was initially the brainchild of an expatriate Indian physics professor at the University of Maryland. While traveling back to his native India, he was struck by the prevalence of petty corruption and felt compelled to do something about it. Each time he was asked to pay kickbacks, he would show his resistance by handing the official a zero denomination note. 5th Pillar’s president Vijay Anand took this idea of zero rupee resistance one step further. He decided to print them en masse, publicize them widely, and distribute them to ordinary Indian citizens who could use them to show their disapproval of public service delivery dependent on bribes. The initial batch of 25,000 notes was met with such high demand that 5th Pillar has distributed one million zero rupee notes since 2007.

There are many success stories of people who have used the notes to resist bribery. In a town on the outskirts of Chennai, an elderly woman from a poor household tried desperately for 1.5 years to secure a land title (called patta), which she intended to use as collateral for a bank loan used to finance her granddaughter’s college education. But, there was a problem: the Revenue Department official responsible for giving out the patta demanded a bribe for this service. Living below the poverty line, the woman simply could not afford to pay. Fed up with bribe solicitations and emboldened by the knowledge that she had nothing to lose, the woman approached the Revenue Department official with a zero rupee note. He was stunned. In a response that would be considered highly peculiar given his position, the official stood from his seat, offered her a chair and a cup of tea and finally granted the woman the land title she had sought. In Tamil Nadu, a corrupt official was so intimidated by a protesting citizen's display of a zero rupee note that he returned to the citizen all the bribe money he had collected from facilitating a new electricity connection. In yet another case in Pondicherry, a university student was stopped by traffic police and asked to show her license and registration. When she produced all her papers, the officer asked her for a bribe so that she could go her way, even though she did not violate any traffic laws nor had discrepancy in her papers. The student stuck out the zero rupee note instead. The officer smiled in discomfort and let her go.

ANALYSIS

According to Anand, a number of factors contribute to the success of zero rupee notes in fighting corruption. Even though bribery is a crime punishable by prison sentence, corrupt officials seldom encounter any resistance to their corrupt behavior by ordinary people. When they do, officials fear they will lose their jobs, be subject to disciplinary proceedings or, even, face a prison sentence. More importantly, Anand believes that the success of the notes lies in the willingness of the people to use them. Citizens are willing to stand up to the commonplace practice because they are no longer afraid. They have nothing to lose and are aware that they are not alone in the fight. They are supported by the organization that is pushing the zero rupee initiative. This awareness of institutional support seems to be the biggest hurdle when it comes to transforming norms with respect to corruption. For people to speak up against an age-old phenomenon as daunting as corruption, they must know that there are others who feel similar frustration with the practice. Such group awareness makes people realize that corruption is not unbeatable; maybe—just maybe—individuals can do something to break the norm. That simple but groundbreaking realization allows citizens to help execute ideas like the zero rupee notes, an explicit demonstration of civic resistance to the culture of bribery. This is the first step towards changing behavioral norms among citizens no longer tolerant of bribery-dependent public service delivery. The key to fighting corruption lies in generating public will to fight corruption, and the key to generating this public will lies in transforming norms that condone corruption to norms that can condemn and combat it.

Fumiko Nagano is acting as a consultant to the World Bank’s Communication for Governance & Accountability Program (CommGAP), where she is currently conducting research on measures to strengthen anti-corruption efforts. She holds a BS from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MA from the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

Human Rights and Aid Transparency in Haiti’s Roadmap to Recovery

2010-02-28T05:45:48Z

DEVELOPMENTS

Overwhelmed by sadness, empathy and disbelief, the world’s eyes and hearts have been focused for weeks on the rescue and relief efforts resulting from January’s earthquake in Haiti. However, many who have worked in Haiti fear that a preventable and long term disaster lies on the horizon if international interventions do not break with past patterns.

In recent years, U.S and international aid efforts that could be characterized, at best, as unsustainable and, at worst, deliberately harmful. As international aid begins to pour into Haiti, the global community has a brief moment to break with past mistakes and bring real change to Haiti.

DEVELOPMENTS

BACKGROUND

In 2000, the U.S. and the Inter-American Development Bank approved millions of dollars of what would have been lifesaving loans for improvements to water, health, education, and road infrastructure, only to later withhold these funds because they opposed then President Aristide. While the loans were eventually released, the communities where the very first water projects were to be financed still lack access, ten years later, to reliably clean drinking water, contributing to countless deaths due to water related illness.

In 2004, the international community pledged $1 billion to support Haiti. Organizations such as the RFK Center, Zanmi Lasante and the NYU Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, tried to track the fulfillment of those pledges, but never received clear and consistent answers from donor states on the status of the aid. With no transparency or coordinating body to turn to, the Haitian people had no hope of knowing if that money ever got to Haiti, much less where it was directed and how it could be used to improve their communities. Haitian government sources later confirmed that most of the pledges had never been fulfilled.

In 2008, after hurricanes ravaged the country, the international community convened another donor conference resulting in over $324 million in pledges. Prior to the earthquake, most of those pledges had still not been fulfilled.

ANALYSIS

Historically, interventions in Haiti have been viewed through the lens of charity. The international community, NGOs, international organizations and donor states have gathered time and again to announce to the world pledges of support, only to quietly back away from these commitments. The goodwill of the international community is certainly critical today to Haiti’s future but charity alone will not be enough to ultimately rebuild a safer and more sustainable Haiti. Only by forging a new path, guided by a commitment to the human rights of the Haitian people, can the international community help to create real, lasting change.

Charity is a personal act of choice with no real repercussions. Human rights are legal obligations, grounded in our shared acknowledgement of human dignity - something that every government must respect and no government can take away.

In the aftermath of this disaster, every country and international organization working toward recovery in Haiti needs to ensure that their actions will promote the respect and dignity of the Haitian people based on constitutionally and internationally recognized rights to water, health, and education. By partnering with the Haitian government and local communities in assessing the nation’s recovery needs and making long term pledges to support the government of Haiti in meeting these needs, donors can pave a sustainable path towards recovery. Additionally, the donor nations should commit to making their aid transparent so every Haitian knows where funds are going. Accountability mechanisms are needed to ensure that the government of Haiti, the international community and NGOs use these funds appropriately.

As the world looks for a way to help Haiti rebuild after the earthquakes, the international community has opportunity to avert a second man-made disaster. The United States and the international donor states and institutions must act now to end a painful history of irresponsible aid policies in Haiti. In acting immediately, as recovery plans are developed, we can honor the survivors of this tragedy by supporting Haitians as they build a better Haiti.

Kerry Kennedy is President and founder of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. Monika Kalra Varma is Director of the RFK Center for Human Rights.

FPD World Views: Interview on Haiti with Monika Kalra Varma

2010-02-28T15:50:05Z

Foreign Policy Digest is pleased to present the following interview with Monika Kalra Varma, the Director of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. Ms. Varma sat down with Adam Benz, Foreign Policy Digest's Editor-in-Chief, to discuss ways in which the U.S. and international community can best assist Haiti with the country's current humanitarian crisis and in its longterm goals of building a better future for the Haitian people.

The interview marks the most recent installment of Foreign Policy Digest "World Views", a series of interviews on contemporary foreign affairs topics conducted by the staff of Foreign Policy Digest with diplomats and foreign policy-makers, available on the Foreign Policy Digest website and the Foreign Policy Digest channel on YouTube.

Corruption Concerns Plague Kazakstan's Rise

2010-02-21T04:59:06Z

DEVELOPMENTS

On January 1, 2010, Kazakhstan assumed the chairmanship of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), amid unusual controversy. Kazakhstan succeeded Greece in the rotating chairmanship of the 56-country body, which is the world’s largest security-oriented intergovernmental organization. Formed in the Cold War to diffuse East-West tensions, the forum focuses on arms control, free and fair elections, and human rights issues. The OSCE is one of the preeminent forums for Western governments to engage with Russia and former Soviet republics, such as Kazakhstan on the issues of human rights, democracy and clean government. Many observers therefore find Kazakhstan's leadership problematic given its well-documented history of corruption and human rights abuses.

DEVELOPMENTS

BACKGROUND

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev called the successful OSCE bid “an extremely important recognition of Kazakhstan's international authority, and a historical mission for the Kazakh state.” Indeed, the seat has been a long-awaited triumph in terms of Kazakh foreign policy goals: with a booming energy economy, the OSCE chairmanship is a victorious acknowledgment of the nation’s regional success, as well as its political system. Kazakhstan’s tenure is unprecedented: it is the first Asian nation, the first ex-Soviet republic, and the first CIS member to take the seat. It is also the first nation to chair the OSCE that has never had free and fair elections, as judged by OSCE institutions. Therein lies the uproar. Janez Lenarcic, head of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, publically chided Kazakhstan in December, warning: “taking over the chairmanship of the OSCE is a great responsibility and challenge for each participating state, including Kazakhstan. ODIHR and other parts of the [OSCE] as well have in the past expressed concerns about issues related to, for example, the election framework in Kazakhstan, freedom of the media, and other issues." Lenarcic’s sentiment is shared by democratic and human rights watchdog groups, all concerned with Kazakhstan’s checkered record. In 2007, the pro-Nazarbayev party, Nur-Otan, won every seat in parliamentary elections. Recently, it considered proposals to vote Nazarbayev “president for life.” Simultaneously, media and press freedoms have been constricted; violent attacks on journalists have been reported, and a July 2009 piece of legislation has extended state censorship of internet content. Members of the opposition have been harassed and handed excessive sentences on dubious charges in court. Corruption is entrenched: a U.S. court even named Nazarbayev as an unindicted conspirator in an international money laundering case. Other repressive legislation – a law against spreading ‘false information’ about elections, another restricting rights of assembly – have raised suspicions about Kazakhstan’s ability to be the democratic standard for the OSCE. In November, Human Rights Watch released a report entitled “Kazakhstan: Rights Deteriorating As OSCE Chairmanship Nears,” which termed the Kazakh situation as a “rollback in human rights.” Freedom House ranks Kazakhstan as “unfree.” Corruption itself is entrenched. In July 2009, a string of senior officials were arrested on such charges, including the former environment minister, Nurlan Iskakov, for embezzlement, and Kazhimurat Mayermanov, a former deputy defense minister charged with acquiring defective military hardware that cost Kazakhstan $82 million. Consequently, a veritable political cleansing of government posts has dogmatically been launched within the past year. Former Defense Minister Daniyal Akhmetov, a noted Nazarbayev loyalist and former prime minster, lost his job after the Mayermanov scandal; fear swept through Astana that he too would soon be charged, thereby opening the floodgates for further allegations against faithful Nazarbayev associates. In the private sector, two well-lauded entrepreneurs were arrested on corruption charges. Mukhtar Dzhakishev, the former head of the state-owned nuclear holding company Kazatomprom, and Mukhtar Ablyazov, BTA Bank’s former board chairman, face allegations of conspiring to and appropriating 60 percent of Kazakhstan’s uranium – deposits worth billions of dollars. Astana also alleged the fugitive Ablyazov of racketeering and money laundering. Ablyazov (as have others) has claimed the charges are purely political; the state’s action of immediately acquiring a 78 percent share of BTA did not help to dispute this opinion. Officials have declared the many ensuing trials a result of an invigorated anti-corruption drive, but analysts believe it is merely “intra-clan score settling.” Even Nazarbayev is not clean – a U.S. court named him as an unindicted conspirator in an international money laundering case conducted through American-Kazakh oil companies. And whatever exists at the top is only ever-present at the bottom. A government research group estimated the black economy accounts for 50 percent of GDP, while civil society groups have even suggested the figure is actually 80 percent. The greatest economic driver – the energy market – could be a factor. In 2003, 80 percent of oil companies were operating in off-shore zones, unaccountable and subject to no oversight. Ironically, the U.S. ambassador to the OSCE, Stephan Minikes, spoke with Kazakh journalists in 2004 about his worries: “As long as that corruption prevails, the full fruits of democracy and the full fruits of a market economy will never come to the people of Kazakhstan.” Nazarbayev, who has governed since the nation’s independence in 1991, insisted such allegations were merely “artificial divisions between East and West.” Astana is undoubtedly trying to change the OSCE dialogue altogether. On January 14, Nazarbayev and his Foreign Minister (the OSCE Chairman-in-Office) Kanat Saudabayev used their address to outline a new direction for the organization – one that would now emphasize international, economic, energy and environmental security, which are considered second-tier OSCE issues. In his address, Nazarbayev claimed that the OSCE’s biggest summons was answering “whether it can convert itself into a structure that recognizes the diversity of the world. . . or whether it will continue to be an organization segmented into blocs, where the West remains aloof from the space ‘east of Vienna.’” For his part, Saudabeyev elaborated that Afghanistan was a major priority, as well as tolerance and intercultural dialogue. Speaking on Afghanistan, he claimed: “We view the development of the situation in that country from the point of view of global security and the fight against terrorism, religious extremism and drug trafficking.” Astana has also not forgotten the importance of security in Central Asia, specifically the South Caucus.

ANALYSIS

The international community has been concerned with Astana since 2006, when it made its first bid for the chairmanship. The U.S. and UK finally agreed to the 2007 Ministerial Decision granting Kazakhstan the chair, on the condition that the assumption be delayed in order for the country to implement greater reforms. Still, while Kazakhstan had declared intentions of cleaning house, meaningful reform is still lacking – and the situation, by all accounts, has gotten worse. Yet the international climate has changed, which Astana is more than aware of. It was smart to play off OSCE divisions regarding its chairmanship, and particularly used the support of Spain and Germany to gain its successful bid. And Western nations carefully present criticism, concerned that straining relations would certainly strengthen ties with Russia and China. Most importantly, Central Asia is a vital supply link in the continuing Afghanistan War. Accordingly, Kazakhstan’s good relations with its neighbors and outstanding inter-ethnic, intercultural, and inter-religious record would make it an ideal regional negotiator, working to tighten border security and combat Islamic extremism. Its recognition of the importance of economic security and an investor-friendly market make it a good role model for other Caucus states. Kazakhstan’s role as OSCE chair, in relation to Russia, is perhaps more nuanced. In his January 14 address, Nazarbayev prioritized the Russian-drafted European Security Treaty. The Treaty, which was ignored by Western governments, would remodel Eurasian security infrastructure, placing greater importance on Russia and lessening NATO’s influence. This, in turn, would minimize the OSCE itself, which leads to questions regarding Astana’s chairmanship intentions. And while Kazakhstan could serve as a great mediator of tensions in the region between Moscow and other ex-Soviet states, fears still remain that Russia is looking to manipulate the chair (and that Kazakhstan is looking to be manipulated.) Kazakhstan is currently campaigning to hold the next OSCE summit in Astana. Regardless of the decision, the OSCE chairmanship should be viewed both skeptically and optimistically. While Astana’s human rights and democratic record is perhaps disheartening, given the position it holds, the chairmanship may hold it to greater accountability. And Kazakhstan offers a uniquely positive opportunity that can be capitalized on for greater regional, and international, security.

Bronwen de Sena is a staff member of the House Subcommittee on National Security. She is a frequent contributor to Foreign Policy Digest.

The Iranian Opposition: Taking Stock Eight Months Later

2010-02-19T11:19:00Z

DEVELOPMENTS

In June 2009, I witnessed hundreds of thousands of opposition supporters amassed in and around Enghelab (revolution) Square demanding to have their voices heard in a political process that was once the most democratic in the Middle East outside of Israel. Their votes had just been thrown out by the regime of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a tainted election, the outcome of which relied on the counting of hand written ballots.

At one particular polling station in downtown Tehran just blocks away from the Enghelab Hotel where we were staying, I watched as voters, unable to write their names, were allowed to mark ‘X’ next to the name of their candidate of choice. With ballots like these, and the Iranian regime’s established control mechanisms, the scene for vote tampering to achieve a pre-ordained outcome was set.

Regime leaders presumed Iranian voters would accept election results as they had the panoply of policies that have served in recent years to isolate further the country from the rest of the international community. Mere hours after the polls closed, President Ahmadinejad was declared the winner, and protesters, suspecting vote tampering, and fed up with the benefits that often accrue to the vote meddlers themselves, flooded the streets.

Having completed on February 12th the 11-day commemoration of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the Khamenei regime and the movement opposed to it continue to grapple to a stalemate. As the eyes of the world continue to focus on this Persian nation, it is worth checking in on the strength of an opposition movement that bore so much promise just eight months ago.

DEVELOPMENTS

BACKGROUND

Today, the opposition movement is a shadow of its former self. The February 11 protests paled in comparison to those of last summer: the Basij Militiamen attack the car of opposition leader and cleric Mehdi Karoubi as it makes its way down a Tehran thoroughfare; they break into Tehran University and assault students; and opposition members are tried and hanged, all without fear of reprisal. Last summer, as we made our way through the protests in downtown Tehran, I watched in fear as the batons fell on the heads of protesters just 5 yards away. Today I watch the batons fall once more, on You Tube, from the safety of my laptop in New York, 5,000 miles away. Based on events that transpired in Iran during the past week, it is safe to say that near term prospects for a meaningful change to the status quo are bleak.

An Iranian-American reporter who agreed to share his story if his name is withheld was living in Tehran to cover the election. After a second interrogation with pro-regime intelligence bureaucrats days after the election, he fled to Dubai. He was not the only Iranian who left the country on the theory that the prospect of enduring the status quo was not worth his own death. Efforts I undertook to continue dialogue with acquaintances made in Iran often met with replies from those acquaintances that we could continue talking, so long as the conversation was not political – the risk of the Iranian regime overhearing the exchange was too great. Through fear-induced displacement and self-censorship, the size of the protests has dwindled, and prospects for meaningful reform, let alone regime change, are on life support.

ANALYSIS

Though prudently restrained in its engagement with Iranian opposition leaders immediately following the election, the Obama administration approach to Iran’s domestic political dynamics was too restrained, for too long. Today, thanks to a challenging political environment at home, the President’s options in the realm of foreign policy are limited. In Iran, the opposition movement is not there yet, and the President needs to deal with the Iranian government as it is, not as he wishes it would be. The Iranian opposition movement is the most significant of its kind in 30 years. It has the potential to affect democratic reform at the national level, but in the meantime the United States must work toward a consensus on Iran’s nuclear program that will stave off an Israeli air strike of Natanz and other nuclear facilities.

That U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited with Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Bin-Abd-al-Aziz Al Saud to persuade him to convince China’s President Hu Jintao that Saudi Arabia will guarantee China’s oil supply if it will go along with a new round of sanctions against the Khamenei regime is evidence that the Obama Administration is sticking to realist, power politics vis a vis Iran. That is the right approach, at least for now.

Justin McMahan is a former Director at the EastWest Institute. He is now based in New York, where he works in financial services. Read more at http://fromtheregionblogspot.com.

Corruption in Kenya: The Plots Continue

2010-02-20T10:43:32Z

DEVELOPMENTS

Corruption is at the heart of news from Kenya these days. Last week, President Mwai Kibaki suspended eight senior officials for three months pending investigations into two corruption scandals. In one, auditors from Price Waterhouse Coopers revealed that over $26 million had been lost through a program to give impoverished Kenyans access to subsidized maize. The second scandal, brought to light late last year, concerns the loss of more than one million dollars from the Ministry of Education during a short period. In response, both the British and U.S. governments suspended millions of dollars in education assistance in December and January.

Now Prime Minister Raila Odinga and President Kibaki are at loggerheads over their respective authority to suspend senior officials in connection with the scandals. In early 2008, the two men had joined together in a power-sharing coalition government following a disputed presidential election that resulted in over 1,000 deaths and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people. One Kenyan newspaper identified the bloated 40-member cabinet as “one of the most highly paid group of advisers in the world,” with salaries alone costing taxpayers $1.5 million per month. Annual per capita income in Kenya is less than $800.

How can such damaging behavior come to pass? Distinguished journalist and author Michela Wrong explores this question in her recent book, It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower. Despite efforts to limit its circulation in Kenya, the book is having an impact on public discourse regarding corruption in the country. The whistleblower is John Githongo, a prominent anticorruption activist appointed as Permanent Secretary for Governance and Ethics following Kibaki’s 2002 presidential victory. Githongo’s frustrated efforts to investigate high-level corruption expose the factors that enable dishonest activities to flourish. His story also highlights important lessons for how the international community and individuals can prevent corruption and its devastating effects.

DEVELOPMENTS

BACKGROUND

John Githongo was appointed during an especially hopeful period in Kenyan political history. In 2002, Kibaki’s election as the third President of Kenya ended nearly four decades of post-independence rule by the KANU party, the last 24 years of which were headed by outgoing President Daniel arap Moi. An economist and lifelong politician, Kibaki was elected on an anticorruption platform. By that time, Kenya was known as “‘nchi ya kitu kidogo’: ‘land of the “little something,”’ homeland of the bribe,” as Wrong observes.

Indeed, corruption is not new to Kenya. Jomo Kenyatta, the country’s first president after independence in 1963, gave land that European colonizers had confiscated from the Kalenjin tribe to members of his own tribe, the Kikuyu. He also became one of the country’s largest private landowners. Corruption under President Moi, who was a Kalenjin, reached its climax with the Goldenberg scandal, in which the government heavily subsidized gold exports. The scam is said to have cost the country over ten percent of its gross domestic product. Moi’s single-party rule grew increasingly repressive and kleptocratic, prompting the outspoken U.S. Ambassador Smith Hempstone to condition the resumption of aid on democratic political reform and transparency in the early 1990s.

By 2002, corruption in Kenya was going to be history, and John Githongo took on his new role with alacrity. His background made him a perfect choice for conflicting reasons. Previously a journalist and the head of Transparency International’s Kenya chapter, he had credibility. That he had been raised in the Kikuyu elite – his father was the accountant for powerful families – gave some in government reason to believe that tribal loyalty would trump any inconvenient truths. They were wrong.

Through a broad network of informants, Githongo became aware of a number of possible government scams. As he said, “I had to make choices . . . but I was a Kikuyu, in a Kikuyu government, and people around me were saying, ‘It’s our turn to eat.’ You have to start at home.” To establish the principle that the ethnic group in charge would no longer “eat” the country’s resources when it entered government, he had to focus on his own people.

He uncovered the Anglo-Leasing scandal, a procurement scam involving at least 18 military defense contracts, some of which were originally negotiated with the Moi government. Shell companies that were little more than shopfronts in the United Kingdom signed hugely inflated deals with Kenyan officials. Arranged without parliamentary oversight, the contracts were valued at between $750 million to $1 billion. Wrong notes that their value “easily outstripped the country’s total aid that year ($521 million)” and that the “American ambassador came up with an even more depressing figure: the money would have been enough to supply every HIV-positive Kenyan with anti-retrovirals for the next ten years.”

When Githongo began asking questions, some funds paid to Anglo-Leasing were mysteriously returned. But President Kibaki did not back him up and Githongo perceived that the head of the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC) had delivered death threats. In 2005, Githongo went into exile in London, taking damning documents and tapes with him, the contents of which he released a year later to the public.

As Wrong recounts, various government agencies went through the motions of an investigation and some of the implicated ministers resigned. Yet “with a series of KACC absolutions and ministerial reinstatements, the Kibaki administration had cynically set out to test domestic and international opinion, and had discovered that it could reverse the concessions of the previous year without serious repercussion.”

For international observers, corrupt practices seemed a small, inevitable price to pay for relative peace and steady economic growth rates. They also faced pressure to disburse vast amounts of aid. Wrong reports that, “in May 2007, the United Nations actually awarded Kenya its annual Public Service Award” for “improving transparency [and] accountability [] in the public sector.” A few months later, “the World Bank ranked Kenya as one of the world’s top ten reformers when it came to ease of doing business.” Foreign aid donors also gave the Kenyan Treasury more control over how aid funds were spent, and the World Bank representative continued to rent a house from the President in a plush Nairobi suburb. Such complacency and wishful thinking signaled that corrupt behavior could occur without real consequences, helping to set the stage for the 2007 election crisis and subsequent violence.

In 2008, the anticorruption organization Transparency International (TI) ranked Kenya 147 out of 180 countries surveyed. In Africa, it ranked 32 out of 47. TI identifies corruption as “one of the greatest challenges facing Kenya that undermines its fledgling democracy, human rights, economic well-being, growth and development, and national stability.”

ANALYSIS

Beyond the influence of ethnic rivalry in politics, other factors facilitate corruption in Kenya. Githongo identifies the overwhelming power of temptation: “It’s completely intoxicating, mesmerizing. I could see it in their eyes. . . . It’s a point you reach. You simply do it because you can.” Radio presenter Caroline Mutoko faults the problem of leadership: “We live in a country where people in power don’t realize they are actually public servants.”

As Wrong observes, “Corruption relies for its survival upon an intangible, unspoken agreement of what is tolerable behavior.” To tackle the problem, Kenyans must refuse to tolerate bribery, tribal favoritism, or massive scams in society. Mutoko notes the media’s role here, stating that, “Half our problem in the media was that we self-censored. You self-censor and then you wake up one day and realize the way things are is your fault.”

Similarly, Wrong discusses how corruption has also relied on foreign partners who “turn a blind eye to blatant graft and routine human rights abuse in the eagerness to save ‘the poorest of the poor.’” Such “well-meaning thoughtlessness” can do serious damage. Some Kenyans do not perceive good intentions at all, finding instead that “the West doesn’t care enough about Africa to pay too much attention to how its money is spent. It wants to be seen to do the right thing, and that’s as far as the interest goes.”

Economist Paul Collier cautions that, “If you pump money into a system where there is leakage, you are effectively rewarding leakage and disincentivizing those trying to stop it.” Noting the massive challenges African activists face, he affirms that “if you don’t, as a donor, support people like John, you are counteracting their fight for change.”

And who is “like John”? For Wrong, a whistleblower is someone “whose rigid sense of right and wrong made it impossible . . . for him to remain silent.” Githongo recounts that, “Initially, I never saw myself as a whistleblower. . . . Maybe part of me hoped all my work, my interactions with government people, would lead to internal changes that would be positive. But in the end I had to do the hard thing, the painful thing.” He further states, “The worst thing I’ve been called is naïve. I accept that. Only a naïve person would take an anti-corruption job after twenty-four years of systemic corruption. But that’s what you need. I went in naïve and I want to stay that way.”

Supporting passionately committed individuals is key, for according to one observer, “You don’t need any more bodies [like the KACC], you don’t need any more laws, you just need good people and the will.” Wrong reiterates the importance of individual actions in fighting corruption in Africa, finding that John Githongo

permanently shifted the debate’s parameters. Altering expectations of how a civil servant under pressure could behave, he made it possible not only for others to follow in his wake but to move beyond him. ‘I’d like to throw a small spanner in the works,’ John says. ‘I’ll do my little bit and the next time it’ll be someone else and someone else and someone else. At the very least, it should never again be possible for civil servants and politicians to get together in a room and discuss how to rip off the Kenyan people.’

In this sense, the silver lining in the most recent corruption scandals in Kenya is how publicized they have become, signaling reduced public tolerance for such behavior. Suspensions of donor aid also denote a stronger emphasis on accountability than before. In the wake of the post-election crisis, more Kenyans and international actors appear to recognize the tremendous toll that lack of transparency and accountability can have on the prospects for peace and prosperity.

Slowly, corruption is increasingly seen as a life-threatening disease. According to the head of a transport company who routinely loses money to corruption in Kenya, “It is a cancer, it will take many years to get it out.” South Africa’s vice president recently called it a “scourge.” Former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo described corruption as “a bigger threat to Africa’s development than AIDS.” With so much so clearly at stake, more of us must become more “like John.”

Katherine Southwick is the Africa Regional Editor for Foreign Policy Digest. She lived in Kenya from 1990-1996 and has visited the country several times since that period.

Uphill Fight for Good Government in Argentina

2010-02-19T11:32:12Z

DEVELOPMENTS

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner prevailed in a prolonged power struggle over the country’s central bank earlier this month when Mercedes Marcó del Pont was appointed as the institution’s new head. The ascension of Marcó del Pont, an ally of the president, concluded a month of political maneuvering that began when Fernandez de Kirchner tried to dismiss central bank President Martín Redrado on January 7.

His offense? Refusing the president’s demand of $6.5 billion of the bank’s reserves to help pay the government’s debt.

Redrado’s dismissal was done via an emergency decree with Congress out of session, (a time-honored tradition in Argentine politics). The Supreme Court cried foul, briefly reinstated Redrado, and then ruled that a congressional commission should decide his fate. Undeterred, Fernandez appointed the bank’s deputy governor as interim head and barred Redrado from the bank. Awaiting the outcome of the commission, Redrado submitted his resignation on January 30, which was bizarrely rejected by the president, who speciously insisted the commission reach its conclusion.

The unexpected appointment of Marcó del Pont on February 3 confirmed the obvious: the central bank will be under the president’s control for the remainder of her term. The new bank chief said as much upon taking office, when she expressed the view that central bank independence should be limited.

What might Fernandez have in mind for the country’s near record $48 billion of reserves? A rash of spending will probably be needed for Fernandez to revive her flagging popularity ahead of the 2011 presidential elections – or, in a scenario analysts consider more likely, to position her husband and predecessor Néstor Kirchner for a bid to return to the presidency. Either way, the specter of four more years of kircherismo bodes poorly for the state of Argentine democracy.

DEVELOPMENTS

His offense? Refusing the president’s demand of $6.5 billion of the bank’s reserves to help pay the government’s debt.

BACKGROUND

Néstor Kirchner came to power, as Argentine leaders often do, during a time of crisis. His election in 2003 came as the country was still in the throes of the 2001 financial collapse and reeling from a political upheaval that saw two presidents resign in succession. Kirchner oversaw a return to economic stability, brought inflation under control, and Argentina was soon enjoying so-called “Chinese growth” – the economy grew on average by 9 percent during his term. To accomplish this, Kirchner made generous use of emergency decrees, which allowed him to bypass Congress and essentially impose legislation.

Centralization of authority in the executive might be appropriate in managing a crisis. But problems arise when governing by decree becomes habit. Kirchner would go on to pass 140 “National Unity Decrees” during his first two years in office. In 2006, with the economy humming along, Kirchner was given further control of the budgetary issues.

The preference seems to run in the family. Cristina Fernandez has strong-armed her way through Congress to nationalize $30 billion worth of private retirement pensions in 2008 (again, the government needed money), and again last fall to pass a controversial media law widely believed to be targeting the Clarín group, a staunch Kirchner critic.

The abuse of executive authority reflects fundamental and long-standing weaknesses in the Argentine political system. The Kirchners are members of the Peronist party, which has been the dominant force in Argentine politics since the days of its namesake, Juan D. Perón. No opposition party has managed to mount a consistent, national challenge to the Peronists, which count on strong organization and patronage networks throughout the country. Although there is wide ideological division and opposing factions within the Peronist camp, there are strong incentives, once a Peronist has won office, for everyone else to fall in line. The federal government has wide discretion over budgets in the country’s twenty-three provinces, making regional opposition potentially costly. Would-be defectors usually fail to attract many followers, even when there is a strong Peronist bloc opposing the policies of the government.

The Argentine Congress has been a political backwater. It lacks prestige and independence, and its members are beholden to their provincial governors, who nominate candidates. Congressional loyalty too is often secured by the power of the federal purse.

Finally, Argentine politics appear to be infected with a strong strain of messiah complex, not entirely surprising considering the country’s dominant political figure remains the father of Latin American populism himself. Witness Carlos Menem, the Peronist who authored Argentina’s neoliberal economic restructuring during the 1990s. His program of privatizations, openness to trade, and importantly pegging the peso to the dollar generated high growth for the better part of a decade but ultimately contributed to the disaster of 2001. Still, Menem topped the Peronist ticket in 2003 and actually outpolled Kirchner 24-22 percent in the first round (Kirchner was declared the winner after Menem refused to participate in a run-off). Shockingly, Menem is still lingering on the Argentine political scene despite ongoing fraud investigation and is among the candidates in the 2011 election. As an ex-President, he should have plenty of company.

ANALYSIS

When Néstor Kirchner chose not to seek reelection in 2007 despite his high approval ratings, and instead had his wife and then-Senator Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner run in his place, Argentine political analysts widely believed Kirchner was setting the stage for a 2011 run, thus prolonging a Kirchner dynasty well into the next decade.

That perception persists today, although the Kirchner brand has been severely damaged. The economy has sputtered in the recession and Fernandez de Kirchner has alienated a good deal of the electorate with her nationalization of the pensions and the media law to name only two unpopular moves. Meanwhile Néstor lost a June 2009 bid for Congress in the all-important Buenos Aires province.

Even so, he might be the man to beat. For a while, there seemed to be a political vacuum in Buenos Aires. Recently, Buenos Aires mayor Mauricio Macri threw his hat in the ring. While popular in the capital, it is unclear whether his center-right PRO party can compete in the provinces, always a Peronist stronghold.

After four years of creeping state intervention in the economy, Macri’s pro-business orientation could provide much-needed economic opening. To govern effectively – not to mention win the election – however, he will have to contend with the entrenched Peronist machine, which has historically made life difficult for presidents from other parties. But after eight years of Kircherismo, the country seems ready for change.

Teddy Kahn is a columnist for Foreign Policy Digest.

Interview with Michela Wrong: Author of It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower

2010-02-20T10:30:03Z

In 2002, Mwai Kibaki was elected the third President of Kenya on an anticorruption platform. He promptly appointed John Githongo, a prominent anticorruption activist, as Permanent Secretary for Governance and Ethics. Githongo’s dogged efforts uncovered high-level corruption, notably the Anglo-Leasing scandal, which involved hugely inflated contracts, arranged without parliamentary oversight, that were valued at between $750 million to $1 billion.

By 2005, Githongo resigned in frustration and went into exile in London, taking damning documents with him. For two weeks, he hid out in the apartment of his friend, author and journalist Michela Wrong. A year later, he exposed the scandal and the culture of corruption in Kenya to the world. Michela Wrong describes this culture in her recent book detailing Githongo’s experience, It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower:

Whether expressed in the petty bribes the average Kenyan had to pay each week to fat-bellied policemen and local councilors, the jobs for the boys doled out by civil servants and politicians on strictly tribal lines, or the massive scams perpetrated by the country’s ruling elite, sleaze had become endemic. ‘Eating,” as Kenyans dubbed the gorging on state resources by the well-connected, had crippled the nation.

Foreign Policy Digest spoke with Michela Wrong to discuss her book, John Githongo and corruption in Kenya, and the implications of the story for the international community.

FPD: What motivated you to write this book?

When John turned up, I was actually writing another book. I was annoyed because it interrupted my concentration, but after awhile, I realized that this was a very interesting personal story, which could tell a bigger story about Kenya, corruption, and the experiences I had had covering Kenya through two elections. Originally, I thought John would write his own book and that’s why I didn’t offer for a long time. Eventually, he concluded that he was too close to it, that he needed an outsider to do it, and he gave this project his blessing.

FPD: Why was John Githongo considered to be the right person for this job?

I don’t think the people who appointed him really thought it through. Their reaction was very instinctive, redolent of Kenya in many ways and the whole system. His father was the accountant for many leading Kikuyus and was part of the old boy network. John was someone they had known as a child, he had gone to school with their sons. He came from the right ethnic community. They thought, “Here’s this bright young man who we’ve known all our lives, he’s got all the right credentials, he’s squeaky clean, and he presents a great face to the outside world. We know he’s one of us.” The Kikuyu elite, some of whom had been energetic anticorruption campaigners, had come to associate corruption so strongly with former President Moi and Kalenjin business interests. The appointment was probably made in good faith, but I don’t think it occurred to them that this was bound to become a tricky issue for them as well. They didn’t sit down when they were in opposition and imagine what it would be like if they had state resources at their command, how they would behave themselves, and control those urges when they came to power. It’s a lack of imagination, really.

FPD: You write about John’s personality, suggesting that he was naïve, too idealistic, or lacked a thick skin. As an anticorruption official, what kinds of qualities should he have had?

I think he needed to have more political cover than he actually had. He obviously thought he had all the cover he needed, that he had the President behind him. But he lost the President’s support, and it became increasingly clear during that time that he was incredibly isolated. If he had had several key ministers who believed in him, who were protecting his work, ministers that were outside the Mt. Kenya Mafia, as they called it, he would have been in a much better position. But you can’t rely on that kind of support unless you’ve built it up over a number of years. He might have been naïve, but if you’re cynical, are you going to be any good as an anticorruption campaigner? You do have to believe in the rule of law; you have to have zero tolerance.

FPD: What ultimately made him decide to leave Kenya?

When he turned up on my doorstep, he had been subjected to a mounting barrage of threats and warnings from colleagues. I assumed he'd fled because he feared for his life. But in retrospect, he realised that his departure was triggered by the awareness that he had lost perspective and desperately needed to distance himself. As he got sucked further into the system, he didn’t know what he thought anymore. He needed to get away to go through his tapes and documentation, to catalogue how many times he had tipped off the President and how many warnings he had received to stop investigating. He needed to see it all in black and white to realize that the President did not support him. John is extremely analytical, which in some ways is a weakness. He’s not an impetuous decision-maker, and I think it would have been blatantly obvious to many people a lot earlier than it was with John that the President was no longer supporting his work and that it was time to go. Because his relationship with the President mattered enormously to him, he needed to spend a year going through the evidence to convince himself that the President was not behind him.

FPD: Despite all the risks, what compelled him to go public, to become a whistleblower?

It was a very brave decision, but such a lonely path to take. I think one of the motivating factors was anger. I think he felt that he had been used as a scapegoat and a fig-leaf by these men he had trusted, who were old family friends, who should have known better, and who should have respected him more. Imagine that you’ve been very close with someone, and they tell you that they are 100 percent behind what you are doing, and then gradually you realize that it’s not the case, that in fact, that person is really the source of all your problems. You’re going to get pretty angry.

FPD: To what extent do you think his decision arose from a sense of moral obligation?

That was definitely part of it. Someone who had worked with him once told me, “The thing you have to understand about John is that he is the kind of person who simply wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he took certain decisions.” He is profoundly religious and lives his life according to religious moral codes. As I mention in the book, there had been a previous incident in which he discovered money had been stolen from a nongovernmental organization with which he had been involved. He could have stayed quiet, but instead he decided to have it investigated.

FPD: What are the main causes or facilitating factors of corruption in Kenya?

I think the main facilitating factor is ethnic rivalry, the sense that your life’s chances are determined by which ethnic group you belong to. You will only get a job, a contract, a place in school, just about anything in your life that matters, if you happen to be related to or part of the same tribal community as someone in a position to help you. This poisonous ethnic rivalry became ingrained during the colonial period, and today almost no institution in Kenya works as a meritocracy.

FPD: And if ethnic rivalry is so important to one’s chances in life in Kenya, to what extent do Kenyans even believe that corruption is wrong?

Many Kenyans don’t think corruption is wrong. They just think corruption is wrong when it is carried out by someone else. If someone from your community does it, it’s not seen as corruption at all. It’s actually seen as doing right by members of your community. In a way, you’re doing the moral thing, a civic duty. You are taking care of people in a state where the government will not take care of them, where there are no safety blankets, where mutual assistance and dependency is part of the game and is always defined in ethnic terms. They see it in their daily life all the time.

FPD: On the other hand, these deals that John Githongo uncovered, could Kenyans really see such behavior as benefitting Kenya?

Through the decades, there have been enormous corruption scams in Kenya, but people never seemed to get as angry about them as I would have done. They never made the connection between the fact that the economy was in a freefall, that streets were full of potholes, that hospitals were falling apart, and that so many services were collapsing with corruption at the top. Many people said to me when the book came out, “We knew all this stuff, but your book connects the dots.” Recent scandals involving education, fuel, and maize supplies have also encouraged people to start making connections. These are all scandals in which people are being hit personally, where food and transportation have become more expensive and children can’t get access to school.

FPD: Could you outline the role of donors (foreign governments and international institutions) in preventing corruption?

I think sometimes it’s not so much a question of cutting off the aid, but of being a vocal, combative, and difficult partner, whether you are a bilateral donor or the World Bank or International Monetary Fund lending or granting huge sums of money. I think this is what you saw in the character of Edward Clay, the British High Commissioner in Kenya from 2001 to 2005. There are many useful steps donors can take before they reach the point of threatening to cut off aid to a country.

Too often, the aim is just to spend the money. Countries like Britain, Norway, and Sweden, who strive to give about 0.7 percent of gross national product in the form of aid, face significant disbursement pressure. If you start to quibble over every cent that has to be approved, you won’t be able to spend that money and you won’t be able to say to your Western taxpayers, “Look how many countries we’re helping in Africa.” People in Britain who want to “help Africa” don’t understand how difficult it is to ensure that the money reaches the intended recipients. Donors resist oversight because it requires so many man-hours. In Britain, DFID [the Department for International Development] is cutting staff levels, and more and more of its aid money is going via the World Bank. The tendency, therefore, is towards less and less oversight, and the problem is not going to go away.

Consider this most recent scandal involving the Kenyan Ministry of Education, in which DFID – through the World Bank – had been supporting the country’s free primary education system. The World Bank representative happens to be an anticorruption expert, and he decided to audit the programs. They examined a couple months of accounts and discovered that $1 million had been stolen, and that program has been going on for six years. Imagine how much money has actually been stolen and we’ve only just noticed! It’s astonishing.

FPD: You cite some Kenyans who “detect an incipient racism, rather than altruism, in [donors’] lack of discrimination” when disbursing aid.

A lot of my Kenyan journalist friends say, “Nobody in your country really cares whether the money is being properly spent. It’s just about being seen to spend it, because nobody really cares about Africa.” The lack of oversight reveals an unbalanced relationship, reflecting a kind of covert racism in a patronizing view that all you can do for Africa is to “help” it. There’s no sense that the relationship should become egalitarian and reciprocal.

FPD: In your book, you refer somewhat ironically to the West as “the trusted arbiters of Kenyan reality.” What does this reflect about how Kenyans see themselves and assess their country’s challenges?

I think that’s true of many African countries I have visited. They see themselves as reflected through the sunglasses of Westerners. The emphasis is on Western models of governance and institutions, rather than embracing the idea that you could have African models as well. It is very strange that if a Westerner says something about Kenya, it matters more than if a Kenyan says it. It doesn’t matter how stupid that Westerner is or how unimportant the newspaper they work for is. The comment will then be discussed, embraced, or deeply disagreed with. It matters. It’ s a colonial legacy, a legacy of a lack of self-confidence, which goes hand-in-hand with the prickliness of those who resent the colonial past.

FPD: You link Kenya’s culture of corruption, facilitated in part by opaque donor relationships, to the 2007-2008 election violence as well.

I thought it was the same syndrome. John himself feels that the donors have blood on their hands. By condoning what was going on for so long on the corruption front, they sent out an unmistakable signal to the regime that Kibaki had the full support of the West, and that if he decided to rig the election, that would be OK, too.

Now because of the election violence, donors are terrified about where Kenya may be heading and they’re desperately trying to prevent it from going down that route. You see the announcement of travel bans and more active diplomatic engagement because everyone realizes how disastrous an implosion of Kenya would be for the region and continent.

I hope the story of John Githongo and Anglo Leasing has at least made the donors more aware that you can be complicit in corruption if you’re not too bothered where your money goes. I could still point to other countries, however, where things are actually getting worse, such as Ethiopia. The issue there is not so much corruption, but the steady disbursement of funds no matter the consequences. If that money allows the government to boost military spending and invade neighbors, that’s OK. It’s the same issue of donors uncritically supporting a government where they should have a much more challenging relationship.

FPD: Another exacerbating factor that comes to mind is the problem of leadership. You document how after 2002, the Kibaki regime seemed to miss critical opportunities.

You have devastatingly disappointing leadership in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa. You would have thought that the election violence in 2008 would have shocked the Kenyan government into thinking again. I could have thought of many gestures they could have made which would have helped to heal. I was in Kisumu [in western Kenya] when it was stripped and looted by people living in the slums. If Kibaki had gone hand in hand with [his opponent] Raila Odinga, and had announced in the streets of Kisumu with all the television cameras on him that there would be a massive reconstruction project in Kisumu, the donors would have showered him with support, but there was no way he was going to do that. It’s the mentality of people who have been involved in the country’s politics since independence and who can’t break habits of thought and behavior molded half a century ago.

FPD: What could one do as a foreigner or as a Kenyan to counter corruption?

Donors could stop thinking that anticorruption units or commissions are the way forward. They’re either complicit or useless. John believes it’s much more helpful to concentrate on grassroots mobilization, showing Africans that the notion that protecting your ethnic group at the expense of others is a civic duty is part of a much bigger problem. For Kenyans, it boils down to a whole bunch of individual decisions, everyone considering what they do in their own working environments, what they ask people to do around them. I was almost never asked for a bribe when I lived in Africa because I was white. There was this general understanding that white people don’t pay bribes. They tend to make a fuss, they threaten to tell your manager, they have more power, and they could make life difficult for you. If that’s just the received truth, it’s up to the individual to make it more of an ordeal to ask for a bribe rather than blindly accepting it in their daily transactions.

FPD: Ultimately, what impact have the actions of John Githongo and outspoken diplomats had on Kenya?

The people responsible for the Anglo Leasing scandal have not been prosecuted or punished, and one of the key ministers is back in power. From that perspective, you could say it has been a total failure. But in terms of moving public debate forward, it has been momentous. Everything was exposed, everyone knows who did it, how it worked, and John is back in the country working with grassroots organizations. Although he has two bodyguards, he has not been bumped off or ostracized. His actions set a benchmark for behavior, namely that you don’t have to play the old patronage games.

Previously, the African continent did not have a single whistleblower, someone who stood up to his boss and said, “I won’t play ball.” Now you look at the situation today in Kenya, where you had a lively press that widely covered the Anglo Leasing story, where you have the whistleblower working back in the country, and a very active debate in the media, town halls, and churches. I am very worried about security in Kenya, about the possible explosion of ethnic violence during the next election. But in terms of the debate, Kenyans are finally talking about issues they needed to address.

FPD: Finally, what impact has your book had?

Regarding the book, Kenyans have latched onto it and debated it. Some people love it and others hate it. You feel that you’ve played a part in a historic process of working out what’s going on in Kenya, where we want to be, and who we are. As a writer, that’s intensely rewarding.

In a lesser way, the book is having that effect across Africa. I’ve received messages from Sudan, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Ghana, and elsewhere in which individuals have said, “This is exactly what’s happening in my country, too.” Because these same patterns are so familiar, the story has resonated far beyond Kenya.