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President Uhuru Kenyatta
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Kenya's
president has suspended four cabinet secretaries and 17 other senior officials
to facilitate investigations into allegations of corruption.
A
statement read by President Uhuru Kenyatta's spokesman Manoah Esipisu said
Saturday the officers have been named in a confidential report by the Ethics
and Anti-Corruption Commission.
Reuters reports:
Four Kenyan ministers
vacated their posts on Saturday to pave the way for investigations into
corruption allegations, President Uhuru Kenyatta's office said, days after he
asked those named in a confidential report to do so.
Manoah Esipisu,
Kenyatta's spokesman, said Energy and Petroleum Cabinet Secretary Davis
Chirchir, Transport and Infrastructure Minister Michael Kamau and Kazungu
Kambi, in charge of Labour, had complied with the president's request.
Agriculture and Fisheries
Cabinet Secretary Felix Koskei had earlier in the day vacated his post, but
said he expected to be cleared of any wrongdoing.
Other cabinet ministers
will temporarily handle the workload of the five, Esipisu said.
On Thursday, without
naming names, President Kenyatta said any officials adversely mentioned in the
confidential Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission report he handed to
parliament should step aside regardless of seniority pending investigation.
"Clearly the
President has drawn the line on corruption and expects all State and Public
Officers to abide by Executive Order No.6 in which he gives express directives
in regard to the intolerance for this vice in government," Esipisu said.
He added that others who
had left their posts included Francis Kimemia, secretary to the cabinet, four
principal secretaries, the chief of staff at the Deputy President's Office and
the Investment Secretary at the National Treasury.
Eight chief executives of
state-run corporations and the National Social Security Fund also stepped
aside.
"The President
reaffirms that there are no sacred cows and that this is just the beginning of
an unwavering war against corruption," Esipisu said.
Koskei said he had never
been summoned by the state-run watchdog, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption
Commission, to be questioned on any involvement in graft, and would visit the
body's offices on Monday with his lawyers to start clearing his name.
Kenyatta made the fight
against graft a priority on taking office in 2013, but critics say he has
failed to sweep out corrupt officials in a nation where corruption is seen as a
major obstacle to business, law enforcement and provision of public services.
Parliament is yet to
disclose the report's details.
"As the President
told Parliament, it is not his place to determine the guilt or otherwise of the
State or Public Officers named in the ... report but that the time has come to
send a strong signal to the country," Esipisu said. (Additional reporting
by George Obulutsa; Editing by Stephen Powell and Raissa Kasolowsky)
AP
reports the suspensions have been met with skepticism by members of the public
as senior officials suspended in previous regimes have never been convicted and
some returned to their Cabinet positions even before investigations were complete.
Anti-corruption
activist Boniface Mwangi said high-ranking officials are rarely convicted in
Kenya, instead they make their way back to power.
Transparency International, in its 2014 corruption
perception index, ranked Kenya close to the bottom — 145 out of 175 countries.
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