Kenya's Kibaki returns graft-linked ally to cabinet
24 Jul 2007 18:55:57 GMT Source: Reuters
By C. Bryson Hull NAIROBI, July 24 (Reuters) - Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki on Tuesday reappointed to the cabinet a longtime ally who resigned as finance minister over a corruption scandal of which he has yet to be cleared. Kibaki named David Mwiraria environment and natural resources minister, a move political analysts said was aimed at boosting support before a December election that is expected to be Kenya's most competitive multi-party poll ever. Mwiraria resigned in February 2006 over the "Anglo Leasing" scandal, named after a fictitious company through which at least $200 million was siphoned off through bogus procurement contracts and then mysteriously returned to the treasury. "It shows that the president values loyalty more than anything else ahead of the election, since he is appointing Mwiraria when questions over his role in Anglo Leasing have not been resolved," Macharia Gaitho, a political commentator with Kenya's Daily Nation newspaper, told Reuters. Mwiraria has always denied wrongdoing. The scandal quickly dented Kibaki's 2002 election promise to eliminate the graft that had characterised the autocratic 24-year reign of his predecessor, Daniel arap Moi. It also angered Western donors who demanded stronger action on graft from Kenya, east Africa's largest economy and a beacon of relative stability in a tumultuous and strategic region. Many political forecasters had predicted Mwiraria's return as he is a close friend of Kibaki, an architect of his overwhelming 2002 election victory and brings the support of the Meru tribe. He is the second minister to be brought back to the cabinet after stepping down over Anglo Leasing, following November's re-appointment of fellow Meru Kiraitu Murungi as energy minister. The tribe remains a potent factor in Kenyan politics, and every government since independence in 1963 has been accused of chauvinism but has still doled out political spoils across the spectrum. The Meru tribe has long been closely allied with Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe, Kenya's largest. "It's a reward for cronyism ... It's a move calculated to consolidate political support from the Meru region," political commentator and frequent Kibaki critic Robert Shaw told Reuters. Mwiraria's name resurfaced in January when John Githongo, a top anti-graft official who quit the Kibaki government in frustration, aired an audiotape that he said showed Mwiraria trying to steer him off his Anglo Leasing investigation. The Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission, at odds with Githongo, ruled the tape was inadmissible as evidence.
