PRESS STATEMENT IN RESPONSE TO A PUBLIC STATEMENT BY TI-KENYA
Thursday 25th January 2007
Since being thrown out of my position at TI-Kenya, I decided to devote my energies to building awareness about the perpetrating networks and effects of grand corruption in Kenya. Some of the work we have done over the past 6 months can be seen at www.marskenya.org
Although I have since moved on, I cannot say that I am unhappy that the Board clean up at TI-Kenya has started. Unfortunately, it has taken extremely long to effect. I understand that this announcement has been on the cards since December 2006, when the Board was asked to hand in their wholesale resignation. This was of course vigorously resisted by the members of the Board who have been today been forced out - including some of those who remain on it. Their desire was to remain in control of a moribund TI. Thankfully they did not succeed.
One would have hoped that a total renewal (with a totally new Board) was carried out. The 3 remaining board members do not inspire confidence in me that TI-Kenya is renewed. Their long-standing links to the status quo in Kenya, and their previous roles over the last 12 months on the Board, are evidence that nothing will change.
Dragging my name into TI’s internal affairs is of no consequence. It will do nothing to restore its credibility. For example, who will trust an organization that, since I left, has remained mum as grand corruption engulfed the country.
The Chair of the Board and her fate have little to do with me, save that the courts will decide whether my termination and the defamatory remarks made against me by Evelyn Mungai and Joe Kadhi were the policy of TI; and whether they are defensible.
In the meantime, let me make it clear, window dressing will not save TI-Kenya. A clean break from control by a politically partisan and connected board is the organization’s only salvation. Continuing to maintain the fiction that the organization’s membership has any input into who constitutes the board of TI-Kenya is a deception that Kenyans are not likely to fall for.
