Post by Ed on Feb 6, 2006 21:25:06 GMT 3
Corruption: Media equally guilty
Publication Date: 2/6/2006
Koigi wa Wamwere*
As corruption begins to take its toll, let us again look up its meaning in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary. Corruption is defined as: "Willing to act dishonestly in return for money or personal gain, Evil or morally depraved, Rotten, putrid."
It means more than to take or give a bribe, embezzle or swindle government money. To succeed, the untainted must now lead the war against corruption. If the corrupt champion it, it is lost.
To begin with, unless the current Attorney-General Amos Wako, who has lost the country billions through faulty legal advice and refusal to prosecute corruption, also resigns, the war will not be won.
To fight corruption, we do not need the most highly-qualified legally, but the most morally upright. You cannot fight the beast from within its belly. If you are corrupt, you have no moral mandate to fight it.
Selective prosecution of graft
Indeed, Jesus warned us all. "How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.'"
In the jungle of our politics, hyenas, leopards and other meat-eaters in and out of power grow fat on corruption. Right now, hyenas out of power are shouting the loudest against corruption, and not because they care about the safety of the sheep.
To resume eating, they want the government dissolved. Nor will they hear of their own investigation and prosecution.
Like the opposition, sections of the media call for the selective prosecution of corruption, insisting new must be investigated before old.
They deny they are holding brief for the opposition to take power, but their strategies agree – corrupt opposition must be kept un-prosecuted and united until the government goes.
The sheep may cheer replacing hyenas with leopards or one lot of ethnic hyenas with another, but corruption of meat-eating will not end.
We have snakes of corruption in the house and we must throw them out. But how?, many ask.
Some in the media and the opposition suggest by burning down the whole house. At the risk of sounding conservative, I suggest we should burn a rubber tyre, throw it into the house, smoke the snakes out, but leave the house intact.
Kenyans should be warned against those snakes that want the house burnt because they were smoked out of it, and sections of the media that only want new, not old, not all, snakes smoked out of the house.
At one time, the President said he would be the General that would lead the war against corruption. Today's mainstream the media have appointed themselves the commanders-in-chief of the war. Do they have the moral mandate to be thus?
I feel suicidal posing this question. Without calling them corrupt, Mr Justice Ringera, the anti-corruption Czar, has warned that there are two forces one must never dare criticise – the church and the media.
We fought hard for the right to criticise and be criticised. Then the government was corrupt and dictatorial because we could not criticise it. If today we cannot criticise the media and the church because they will destroy us, are they not corrupt too?
When government was corrupt and dictatorial, it censored the press. Kenyans died, suffered torture and imprisonment so that the media can be free to write and broadcast.
Today, the Government cannot censor the the media but the media censors the Government at will, and blacks out "unpalatable" writers. Have we not replaced corruption and dictatorship of the state with that of the media?
In his book, The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born, Ayi Kwei Armah, talks of a bird called the Chichidodo. It hates human waste but loves maggots. Our media have taken to behaving like the chichidodo. They claim to hate corruption but thrive on corruption and endless political wars.
Thanks to negative reporting by local, more than foreign, media, travel advisories are today regularly issued against Kenya by the US and other countries, and to many who read our newspapers, we have become a "failed state."
Can the media want corruption to end if they grow fat on it? They are corrupt when they refuse to cover all equally. In giving some people coverage and denying others, the media are like a shop-owner whose shop will only sell sugar to friends and not to enemies.
Giving voice to all
While the media exist to make money, they also render a public service of giving voice to all. They must be a free market of ideas except for those who shout "fire, fire!" in a theatre.
When the media censor, they engage in corruption and deny themselves the right to fight graft. Indeed, the media incapacitate themselves from fighting corruption when they propagate tribalism that alone would kill a nation with genocide, but also approve "our good corruption" while condemning "their bad corruption."
Finally, I agree with the media. There should be decisive remedial action, including prosecution and seizure of all ill-gotten wealth."
The cleanest among us must, however, fight that war. It cannot be won by the corruption of one who pays the piper calls the tune or compromised ministers, corrupt opposition or the media writers who rush to serve wealthy clients because of the generous tips they get, unaware that they are walking in graft.
Only the best can fight corruption – old and new, low and high, public and private.
*Mr Wamwere is the MP for Subukia and assistant minister for Information.
Publication Date: 2/6/2006
Koigi wa Wamwere*
As corruption begins to take its toll, let us again look up its meaning in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary. Corruption is defined as: "Willing to act dishonestly in return for money or personal gain, Evil or morally depraved, Rotten, putrid."
It means more than to take or give a bribe, embezzle or swindle government money. To succeed, the untainted must now lead the war against corruption. If the corrupt champion it, it is lost.
To begin with, unless the current Attorney-General Amos Wako, who has lost the country billions through faulty legal advice and refusal to prosecute corruption, also resigns, the war will not be won.
To fight corruption, we do not need the most highly-qualified legally, but the most morally upright. You cannot fight the beast from within its belly. If you are corrupt, you have no moral mandate to fight it.
Selective prosecution of graft
Indeed, Jesus warned us all. "How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.'"
In the jungle of our politics, hyenas, leopards and other meat-eaters in and out of power grow fat on corruption. Right now, hyenas out of power are shouting the loudest against corruption, and not because they care about the safety of the sheep.
To resume eating, they want the government dissolved. Nor will they hear of their own investigation and prosecution.
Like the opposition, sections of the media call for the selective prosecution of corruption, insisting new must be investigated before old.
They deny they are holding brief for the opposition to take power, but their strategies agree – corrupt opposition must be kept un-prosecuted and united until the government goes.
The sheep may cheer replacing hyenas with leopards or one lot of ethnic hyenas with another, but corruption of meat-eating will not end.
We have snakes of corruption in the house and we must throw them out. But how?, many ask.
Some in the media and the opposition suggest by burning down the whole house. At the risk of sounding conservative, I suggest we should burn a rubber tyre, throw it into the house, smoke the snakes out, but leave the house intact.
Kenyans should be warned against those snakes that want the house burnt because they were smoked out of it, and sections of the media that only want new, not old, not all, snakes smoked out of the house.
At one time, the President said he would be the General that would lead the war against corruption. Today's mainstream the media have appointed themselves the commanders-in-chief of the war. Do they have the moral mandate to be thus?
I feel suicidal posing this question. Without calling them corrupt, Mr Justice Ringera, the anti-corruption Czar, has warned that there are two forces one must never dare criticise – the church and the media.
We fought hard for the right to criticise and be criticised. Then the government was corrupt and dictatorial because we could not criticise it. If today we cannot criticise the media and the church because they will destroy us, are they not corrupt too?
When government was corrupt and dictatorial, it censored the press. Kenyans died, suffered torture and imprisonment so that the media can be free to write and broadcast.
Today, the Government cannot censor the the media but the media censors the Government at will, and blacks out "unpalatable" writers. Have we not replaced corruption and dictatorship of the state with that of the media?
In his book, The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born, Ayi Kwei Armah, talks of a bird called the Chichidodo. It hates human waste but loves maggots. Our media have taken to behaving like the chichidodo. They claim to hate corruption but thrive on corruption and endless political wars.
Thanks to negative reporting by local, more than foreign, media, travel advisories are today regularly issued against Kenya by the US and other countries, and to many who read our newspapers, we have become a "failed state."
Can the media want corruption to end if they grow fat on it? They are corrupt when they refuse to cover all equally. In giving some people coverage and denying others, the media are like a shop-owner whose shop will only sell sugar to friends and not to enemies.
Giving voice to all
While the media exist to make money, they also render a public service of giving voice to all. They must be a free market of ideas except for those who shout "fire, fire!" in a theatre.
When the media censor, they engage in corruption and deny themselves the right to fight graft. Indeed, the media incapacitate themselves from fighting corruption when they propagate tribalism that alone would kill a nation with genocide, but also approve "our good corruption" while condemning "their bad corruption."
Finally, I agree with the media. There should be decisive remedial action, including prosecution and seizure of all ill-gotten wealth."
The cleanest among us must, however, fight that war. It cannot be won by the corruption of one who pays the piper calls the tune or compromised ministers, corrupt opposition or the media writers who rush to serve wealthy clients because of the generous tips they get, unaware that they are walking in graft.
Only the best can fight corruption – old and new, low and high, public and private.
*Mr Wamwere is the MP for Subukia and assistant minister for Information.