New analysis suggests that developing countries are losing a trillion dollars or more each year to tax evasion and corruption facilitated by lax laws in Western countries, raising pressure on global leaders to agree to broad new reforms at an international summit later this year.

These massive losses could be leading to as many as 3.6 million deaths a year, according to the ONE Campaign, an advocacy group that focuses on poverty alleviation in Africa. Recovering just part of this money in Sub-Saharan Africa, the organisation says, could allow for the education of 10 million more children“Whenever corruption is allowed to thrive, it inhibits private investment, reduces economic growth, increases the cost of doing business, and can lead to political instability. But in developing countries, corruption is a killer” – ONE Campaign
 a year, or provide some 165 million additional vaccines.

“Whenever corruption is allowed to thrive, it inhibits private investment, reduces economic growth, increases the cost of doing business, and can lead to political instability. But in developing countries, corruption is a killer,” a report on the findings, released Wednesday, states.

“When governments are deprived of their own resources to invest in health care, food security or essential infrastructure, it costs lives, and the biggest toll is on children.”

The new analysis focuses on a spectrum of money laundering, bribery and tax evasion by criminals as well as government officials. The lost money is not development aid but rather undeclared or siphoned-off business earnings – immense tax avoidance resulting in a decreased base from which governments can fund essential services.

International trade offers a key point of manipulation, the report says, with the extractive industries particularly vulnerable. In Africa alone, exports of natural resources grew by a factor of five in the decade leading up to 2012, offering clear prospects for growth alongside lucrative opportunities for corruption on a mass scale.

“Between 2002 and 2011 we saw an exponential increase in illicit financial flows across the globe,” Joseph Kraus, a transparency expert at the ONE Campaign, told IPS.

“Yet while we’re all familiar with corruption in developing countries, it takes two to tango – that money often ends up in the financial centres of the Global North. Those banks, lawyers and accountants are all essentially facilitators of that corruption, so in order to get at the root of this issue we need to go after the problems there.”

Real opportunity

Advocates including the ONE Campaign are currently stepping up pressure on industrialised countries to institute a series of across-the-board transparency measures. Some are aimed at corruption in developing countries, such as strengthening disclosure laws impacting on the extractives industry and bolstering “open data” standards to allow citizens increased oversight over their governments’ dealings.

Several other reforms would need to be carried out by developed countries, particularly those housing major financial centres such as the United States and United Kingdom. These would include new standards requiring governments to automatically exchange tax information, to mandate the publication of full information on corporate ownership, and to force multinational corporations to report on their earnings on a country-by-country basis.

In certain circles, such demands have been percolating for years. But current circumstances could offer unusual opportunity for such changes.

“In the last two years we’ve seen an acceleration of this agenda,” Kraus says. “Eighteen months ago, no one was talking about phantom firms or anonymous shell companies. But these issues have gained a lot of momentum in a short period of time, and there is real opportunity coming up.”

This new energy has been motivated particularly by concerns in advanced economies over shrinking government budgets in the aftermath of the global economic downturn. Yet developing countries arguably stand to benefit the most from substantive reforms, provided they’re structured accordingly.

Advocates of such changes are now looking ahead to a summit, on Nov 15 and 16 in Australia, of the members of the Group of 20 (G20) world’s largest advanced and emerging economies as well as two major meetings of finance ministers in the run-up to that event.

The G20 represent about two-thirds of the world’s population, 85 percent of global gross domestic product and over 75 percent of global trade.

The members of the G20 are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union.

The G20 has taken on a primary role in issues of global financial stability and, more recently, in pushing the automatic exchange of tax information between governments. A new global standard on such exchange could be approved by the G20 ministers in November, among other actions.

“For too long, G20 countries have turned a blind eye to massive financial outflows from developing countries which are channelled through offshore bank accounts and secret companies,” according to John Githongo, an anti-corruption campaigner in Kenya.

“Introducing smart policies could help end this trillion dollar scandal and reap massive benefits for our people at virtually no cost. The G20 should make those changes now.”

Coordinated response

In fact, many G20 countries have instituted some of these reforms on their own. The U.K. government, for instance, has taken unilateral action on publicising information on corporate ownership, while the United States was the first to pass strong transparency requirements for multinational extractives companies.

While such piecemeal national legislation can spur other countries to action, many feel only a comprehensive approach would have a chance at having a substantial impact. Further, many governments have pledged to act on these issues, but have yet to actually follow through.

“Illicit financial flows are a perfect example of a transnational problem, in that you have two legal regimes in which loopholes are being exploited,” Josh Simmons, a policy counsel at Global Financial Integrity, a Washington watchdog group that supplied data for the new ONE Campaign report, told IPS.

“So when an international cooperative body is able to identify these loopholes, they can get member countries to move in sync to address the situation. But if only one country tries to do so, businesses would probably just move elsewhere.”

Others are looking even more broadly than the G20. A paper released last month by researchers with the Center for Global Development, a think tank here, calls for the inclusion of anti-tax-evasion aims in the new global development goals currently being negotiated under the United Nations.

Indeed, even while there could be real movement at the G20 on several of these issues this year, the work on the other end of this equation – in developing countries – remains onerous.

“We need to get developing countries’ tax systems up to speed, strengthen their financial intelligence units and get their anti-laundering laws up to code. And that is proceeding, but much more under the radar given its complexity,” Simmons says.

“Still, that’s where people are actually bearing the brunt of this problem. Tax avoidance in the United States contributes to the national debt, but in developing countries it’s literally causing people to go hungry.”

Edited by Ronald Joshua

The recent collapse of the British Serious Fraud Office court case against Victor Dahdaleh has left the Bahraini prime minister’s reputation for corruption intact.

The case has been widely covered in British media reports, including the Guardian, the Financial Times, and the Independent. Reuters has also reported extensively on the case.Businessmen disagreed on whether to call him "Mr. 10%," "Mr. 30%," or "Mr. 50%."

Without going into the details, suffice it to say the case collapsed before any witnesses were called, sparing Prime Minister Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa the public spectacle of being presented in the trial, at least virtually, as the most vivid face of corruption in Bahrain. He escaped that for now, but this is a Pyrrhic victory.

The SFO mishandling of the case, the Bahraini government’s admission that illicit payments were made to the state-run aluminium company ALBA with the prime minister’s knowledge and approval, the changing testimony of key witnesses, and the refusal of others to testify all contributed to the prosecutor’s inability to proceed against the defendant.

Having his uncle and prime minister saved from public humiliation, in British courts no less, King Hamad cannot possibly pretend that all is well with his prime minister or some of the family ministers who were tainted by the case. The formal admission by one of the prime minister’s deputies presented in a letter to the British court that the multi-million-dollar payments were made with Khalifa’s knowledge and approval will have serious, long-term implications for the ruling family.

According to media reports, this admission corroborated the defendant’s claims that he made the payments in response to the request of ALBA’s board chairman at the time. The chairman, Shaikh Isa Al Khalifa, was the minister of oil and is a close relative of the prime minister.

In fact, according to British media, the court case focused on the Bahraini government culture of “Pay for Play” and on the prime minister’s role in promoting such practices. Simply put, if a foreign businessman intended to do business in Bahrain on a large scale, he would have to pay. The bigger the “Play,” the higher the “Pay,” and the more senior the official involved.

Although the court cleared the defendant of all charges, the Bahraini prime minister has cast a long shadow of corruption on the case. The defendant will walk free, but the prime minister will be saddled by this story for years to come. The Bahraini public do not need to look at leaked diplomatic cables to know about the private life of the prime minister. As his deputy’s letter alluded to, it’s all out there in the public record.

Most observers believe there would have been no way for ALBA’s board chairman to receive such illicit payments from an international businessman without Prime Minister Khalifa knowing about it. Most successful Bahraini businessmen, Sunni and Shia, who hail from the country’s prominent Sunni and Shia families, knew of Khalifa’s practices.

They all agreed that Khalifa drove, practiced, and benefited from the “Pay for Play” insidious culture. They often disagreed on whether to call him “Mr. 10%”, “Mr. 30%” or “Mr. 50%.”

Businessmen told me over the years that several office buildings and hotels were known as “Shaikh Khalifa’s buildings.” His claim to ownership of reclaimed lands, which are dredged at public expense, is another sorry tale of corruption.

At the very least, the case has undermined the legitimacy of Al Khalifa rule, especially at this juncture when the king is touting the family’s “conquest” of the island over 200 years ago.

If the king hopes to retain a modicum of credibility, he should jettison his prime minister and clean up the corrupt culture that has underpinned the ruling family’s business practices at the highest levels. As the king is feverishly trying to endear himself to the British government, in an apparent snub to Washington, his efforts will be severely undermined by Khalifa remaining in the post of prime minister.

Bahraini law does not condone “Pay for Play” practices, but high-level official practices have trumped the law and set up a shadowy system of illicit financial transactions. If the king wishes to encourage international businessmen to invest in his country without violating their countries’ laws on corruption, he should clean up the system in word and in deed.

Under the 1906 British Prevention of Corruption Act, which covered Dahdaleh’s case, if the defendant could prove the payments were made with the knowledge and approval of senior government officials, he could be acquitted of the charges. New anti-corruption laws in Britain and the U.S., however, do not allow potential defendants such a luxury.

It’s somewhat ironic that the prime minister’s downfall could be brought about by corruption rather than repression and abuse of power. Dahdaleh’s case offers a clear lesson to multinational corporations and businessmen and to justice departments in Western and other countries that do not condone corrupt practices. The lesson should also be equally clear to the Bahraini king.

Emile Nakhleh is a former Senior Intelligence Service Officer, a Research Professor at the University of New Mexico, and author of A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World.

A rally by opposition leaders in Kazakhstan to denounce ballot-stuffing brings barely 100 supporters. Credit: Christopher Pala/IPS

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Jul 9 2013 (IPS)

Political parties are seen by the publics in most countries as the most corrupt institutions in their societies, according to the latest survey by the anti-corruption watchdog, Transparency International (TI) released Tuesday.

TI’s Global Corruption Barometer, which was based on interviews with more than 114,000 interviews in 107 countries, also found that a majority of respondents (54 percent) believe their governments are either largely or entirely controlled by a few big entities acting in their own self interest.

Slightly more than one in four respondents (27 percent) reported that they had paid a bribe within the previous 12 months in their dealings with public institutions, such as the police or the courts.

But bribery was far more prevalent in some countries than in others. In Australia, Denmark, Finland, and Japan, for example, one percent of respondents reported having paid a bribe to public officials for services in the past year.

Bribery was far more common in poor countries, particularly in Africa. More than six in 10 respondents reported having paid a bribe in Cameroon, Kenya, Liberia, Libya, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. Nearly three of four respondents in Yemen also said they paid a bribe to officials at least once during the year.

Most respondents said they believed corruption in their countries had gotten worse over since 2011 when the last edition of the Barometer was produced. The new Barometer, which involved more people in more countries than ever before, is the eighth published since 2003.

On the more positive side, two-thirds of respondents said they believed ordinary people can make a difference in fighting corruption in their countries, although those two-thirds are more likely not have paid a bribe.

Majorities range from 51 percent to 72 percent said they would be willing to take one of more of several specific actions from joining an anti-corruption organisation, to taking part in peaceful protests and signing a petition.

“There is a widespread willingness to get involved through these various means which the anti-corruption movement should make the most of to take the fight against corruption to a larger scale,” according to TI, an non-governmental organisations (NGO) which currently has 90 chapters worldwide.

The new survey comes on a wave of international public attention – and mobilisation – against corruption. Most recently, huge public demonstrations in major Brazilian cities have focused popular anger on the persistence of corruption in that country, while India’s anti-corruption movement in 2011 continues to reverberate there.

From China to Nigeria, farming communities and poor urban dwellers have found themselves being dispossessed of their land by wealthy and politically well-connected interests that have used those connections to the judiciary and the civil service in land grabs.

Meanwhile, the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States and the popular protests that have broken out in Greece, Spain, and other southern European countries in response to the Eurocrisis have focused attention on the disproportionate power exerted by private corporate and financial interests on governments.

The Barometer has been one of a number of indices, such as the Rule of Law Index published by the World Justice Project (WJP) that address issues of transparency and corruption and that are used by global institutions, including the World Bank, bilateral aid agencies, and private-sector organisations, to assess the risks of investment and doing business in countries.

TI also publishes an annual Corruption Perceptions Index, which last year rated 176 countries based on the assessments of risk analysts, businessmen, and other local and international experts.

The Barometer, by contrast, interviews a random sample of people who live in the nations covered by the survey. This year’s edition covers both more respondents and more countries than ever before.

All respondents were asked to rate on a one-to-five scale (one being “no problem at all”) how serious corruption is a problem for their countries. The average score across all countries was 4.1, although there were wide variations between countries, particularly between wealthy northern countries and the world’s poorest nations.

Of those who said they had paid bribes during the past year, 31 percent said they had been paid to the police, while 24 percent said the judiciary was the beneficiary. Bribery rates to the police of 75 percent or higher were found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone.

The services with the next-highest bribery rates dealt primarily with registration services, mostly in regard to land ownership and transfers. TI noted that the highest rates were found in post-conflict societies and countries in transition, such as Afghanistan, Cambodia, Iraq, Liberia, Pakistan, and Sierra Leone – countries which also suffer high levels of hunger and malnutrition.

The next most-common services where bribery was paid included medical treatment (17 percent), and education (16 percent), according to the Barometer.

Beyond the payment of bribes, 64 percent of respondents said they believed that personal contacts played an improper role in getting things done in the public sector. More than 80 percent of respondents Israel, Italy, Lebanon, Malawi, Morocco, Nepal, Paraguay, Russia, Ukraine and Vanuatu cited the importance of personal contacts.

In addition, the perception that government is controlled by a few big self-dealing entities, rather than by the public, appears to have become particularly widespread, even among the world’s wealthiest countries, according to the Barometer.

While only five percent of Norwegians hold that belief, 83 percent of Greeks, 70 percent of Italians, 66 percent of Spaniards, and 64 percent of U.S. respondents said they believe that their country’s government is run to a “large extent” or “entirely” “…by a few big interests looking out for themselves.”

As for major institutions, political parties were seen as the most corrupt, scoring a global average of 3.8 on a one-to-five scale. The police scored second at 3.7, followed by civil servants, parliament, and the judiciary at 3.6 each. The private sector and medical services each scored 3.3, followed by the education system (3.2), and media (3.1). Those institutions regarded as least corrupt included the military (2.9), NGOs (2.7), and religious institutions (2.6).

Political parties were seen as most corrupt by respondents in 51 countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Britain, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Palestine, Portugal, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, the U.S. and Uruguay.

Police were seen as most corrupt in 36 countries, including Bangladesh, Bolivia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Mozambique, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Uganda, Venezuela, and Vietnam, among others.

Some countries were listed more than once because respondents rated more than one institution as the most corrupt.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

USAID Administrator Andrew S. Natsios (centre) meets with then Afghan Interim Chairman Hamid Karzai and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker in Kabul, Afghanistan in 2002. Credit: Cpl Matthew Roberson, USMC/USAID/public domain

By Thalif Deen
May 8 2013 (IPS)

When a Southeast Asian country was riddled with corruption in a bygone era, there were rumours that government officials routinely offered receipts every time they accepted a bribe.

Last week, Hamid Karzai, the embattled president of Afghanistan, admitted that he was no better: providing receipts to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which secretly bribed him with “bags of cash dropped off regularly at the presidential palace”."If the U.S. ever stood for good government and democracy, it does not any longer." -- Michael Ratner of the Centre for Constitutional Rights

The New York Times revealed that Karzai was on the CIA payroll, receiving millions of dollars in regular payments for the last decade.

The Afghan president told reporters the CIA money was “an easy source of petty cash” and part of a “slush fund” to pay off warlords and buy their loyalties in a country battling a violent insurgency.

“This is cash,” Karzai was quoted as saying, “It is the choice of the U.S. government.” He was not allowed to disclose the amounts of the CIA payments, he said.

While the United States preaches “good governance” to developing countries at the United Nations, says one African diplomat, “it has been doing the reverse in its own political backyard”.

And good governance not only includes multi-party democracy, rule of law and a free press but also transparent and corruption-free regimes.

Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR), told IPS, “If the U.S. ever stood for good government and democracy, it does not any longer.”

The U.S. claims it wants democracies in the world, but the only way that democracy continues to exist in Afghanistan, and probably other countries, is because it pays elites, warlords and others to support the governments it installs, he added.

“That is not a democracy, it’s a kleptocracy,” said Ratner, who is president of the Berlin-based European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR).

Asked about U.S. double standards on corruption, James Paul, senior advisor at the New York-based Global Policy Forum, told IPS, “It’s a very good topic and certainly worth pursuing.”

The Western powers, he said, are the world’s biggest corrupters, while wringing their hands about “good governance”.

“Remember the planeloads of cash flown into Baghdad to provide baksheesh for the U.S. occupation? In billions. They filled entire cargo planes with 100 dollar bills,” said Paul.

Under the U.S. Anticorruption and Good Governance Act of 2000 (IAGGA), the global fight against corruption remains a foreign policy priority for the United States government.

“Corruption threatens many of our national interests including ensuring security and stability, upholding the rule of law and core democratic values, advancing prosperity, and creating a level playing field for lawful business activity,” says IAGGA.

“Corrupt practices facilitate and contribute to the spread of organized crime and terrorism, undermine public trust in government, and destabilize entire communities and economies.”

Ratner said bribery also gives Karzai’s U.S. handlers, the CIA, control over him and the government.

“If they turn off the spigot flowing money, the Afghan government could fall,” he said, adding that it was a U.S.-installed government not a government of the Afghan people.

“The huge cash payments give the term ‘puppet government’ new meaning,” he argued.

As it is cash, Ratner pointed out, “We don’t really know where the money goes. How much goes into off-shore bank accounts? How much supports money laundering? How much to support those the U.S. might consider terrorists?”

Millions in unaccounted cash goes against every financial control the U.S. has imposed in its efforts to cut off funding to those on its bad guy lists, he noted.

It’s also remarkable, said Ratner, that these millions in cash payments have been revealed and Karzai acknowledges them. “I assume it’s all top secret, classified. Yet, no repercussions from spilling the beans.”

Remarkably and significantly, he said, there have been no efforts to turn off the spigot.

“The U.S. has sunk to a new low. The Romans probably paid off the Huns for a while; in the end, the empire fell,” he said.

The United States, which has had no qualms about bribing the Afghan government, has also signed and ratified the 2003 U.N. Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC), the first global legally binding international treaty against bribery and corruption.

The treaty has been signed by 140 countries and ratified by 165. The United States signed it in December 2003 and ratified it in October 2006.

While the UNCAC remains the overarching global framework against corruption, the United States says it “encourages governments to establish shared approaches through regional instruments and multilateral fora”.

The U.S. government has also promoted joint approaches to deny financial and physical safe haven within the G8 industrial nations and many other fora, promote transparency and codes of conduct.

The United States has also done so within the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum, and in order to “foster integrity and justice sector reform” through the Good Governance for Development in Arab States (GfD) regional partnership.

The United States is also a sponsoring country in the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), which supports greater transparency in financial management in natural resource-rich developing countries.

Members of the 'Tia Rwabe Zi' peace initiative in Kenya. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Jan 10 2013 (IPS)

With less than two months before Kenyans head to the polls for what is shaping up to be the most competitive and polarised general election in the country’s history, many fear that this East African country of over 40 million has not seen the last of electoral violence.

This is in spite of the fact that two top politicians – Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto – still await their fate at the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of crimes against humanity committed during and after the 2007-2008 election.

Post-election violence, alleged to have been instigated and encouraged by these two politicians, left over a thousand people dead, over 3,000 injured and hundreds of thousands displaced.

“Still, unscrupulous politicians continue to spread their tentacles through Kenya’s sprawling slums. Here (in the slums), for a dollar or two, even less, people will threaten, maim or even kill those expressing opposing political positions,” Peter Muga, a political analyst in Nairobi, told IPS.

Unemployment and poverty have left millions of voters in various slums vulnerable to the lure of politicians who have no qualms about taking extreme measures to silence their opponents.

“But since these politicians don’t have the guts to face their opponents at the ballot, they pay youth in the slums to do their dirty work,” Muga added.

Campaign says “no”

In an effort to avoid the disastrous impacts of election-related bribery and violence that fuelled the 2007-2008 crisis, residents of the notorious Mathare slum – the second largest in Nairobi and home to some 500,000 people – have begun a movement dubbed ‘Tia Rwabe Zi’ (Say No to Ksh 200).

“Politicians give us ksh 200 (about two dollars) to fight those who do not support them,” Julia Njoki, a founding member of Tia Rwabe Zi, told IPS.

“Often, contending candidates are from different tribes. This animosity quickly becomes tribal. As we speak, Mathare has already been zoned, there are some tribes that cannot live or vie for political positions in certain areas,” she added.

According to Njoki, this movement was born out of the death and destruction witnessed during the 2007-2008 post-election crisis, the brunt of which was borne by urban slum dwellers.

“In this movement we are saying no to voter bribery. Most of us are youth, both male and female, and women. We have also been reaching out to others in various slums such as Kibera,” she said, referring to the massive Nairobi slum, one of the largest informal settlements in Africa.

Poverty feeds political affiliation

But the campaign has taken on a gargantuan task and will not have an easy victory.

Even memories of the bloody chapter of 2007-2008 will not deter desperate and impoverished Kenyan citizens from doing what they can to ease the burden of their abject living conditions.

When residents of the expansive Kibera slum invented the ‘flying toilets’, many Kenyans with decent homes and proper toilets found humour in it.

But for the slum dwellers themselves, being forced to defecate in plastic bags and send the contents flying through the air for lack of proper sanitation and waste disposal is no laughing matter.

Neither is having to urinate in plastic containers.

While various stakeholders have responded to the plight of slum dwellers and constructed toilets, not much has changed.

When night falls, communal toilets become a no-go zone due to a lack of security. As a result, many residents wake up to find faecal matter in plastic bags on their doorsteps, left behind by neighbours under the cover of darkness.

“People still use flying toilets because using communal toilets are not free. The money goes into maintenance,” Veronica Wamaitha, a resident of Kibera, told IPS.

On a good day, people living in the slum earn about two to three dollars, but often go an entire week without earning a single coin.

“Yet people have to eat,” Rob Wangai, a resident of the Mathare slums, told IPS. “Nothing is for free in the slums. We have even resorted to using illegally connected electricity; as a result, rarely does a week go by without a fire breaking out somewhere.”

Against this backdrop of people living neck deep in squalid conditions, politicians have found answers to their problems.

“Kenya’s population is largely divided into two, those living under the poverty line and the middle class. The middle class are fairly educated and they understand the concept of self dependency – not so with the poor,” Ken Ochiel, a political analyst in Nairobi, told IPS.

He said that those living in poverty still believe that political leaders hold the key to a better future.

“This is the disease that is eating away at our society. Leaders who have more money and can bribe voters are easily elected. But in truth, they don’t improve the living standards of the poor who vote for them in droves,” explained Vesca Kangongo, who is running for the seat of governor in the Rift Valley Region.

Her views are echoed by the only female candidate for the presidency, Hon Martha Karua, who said, “My brothers who are aspiring for top leadership have a lot of money, some of which was stolen from public coffers. I am urging Kenyans to vote for issue-based leaders who can improve the standard of living in this country.”

Karua has also claimed that politicians are behind the recent waves of violence and murder in the Mathare slums, which stir memories of the 2007-2008 crisis in which Mathare, Kibera and many other major urban slums were transformed into dens of death and destruction as tribes rose against each other.

“In every general election, politicians send their foot soldiers to the slums, since the middle class will not accept two dollars to intimidate, threaten and even to kill,” according to Muga, while the poor are much more susceptible to bribery.

Ochiel agreed. “Politicians know that the middle class are more difficult to lure with promises, compared to people who have to (manage) with one meal per day. Slums are also inhabited by a largely homogenous group that is easy to access.”

Still, the Tia Rwabe Zi campaigners are determined to make a difference this year.

The group holds regular meetings and speaks strongly against violence and idleness “We encourage each other to take odd jobs and even notify each other whenever there is a job opening. People must keep busy to stay out of trouble,” Njoki explained.

While acknowledging that expecting people to turn down bribes in the face of poverty and hunger is a tough call – and that change will not come overnight – she stressed that members of the campaign are convinced that their efforts are a step in the right direction.

(END)