ODM leader Raila Odinga has insisted that the war on graft shouldn’t be ethnicized and that no one is above the law. Speaking at an ODM meeting in Karen, Nairobi, Raila said corruption must be dealt with and faulted Deputy President William Ruto for seeming to belittle the amount of money involved in the Arror and Kimwarer dam project, “Nobody is above the law…If somebody is stealing you don’t go around saying Kshs 7 billion is nothing. That money isn’t pocket change, it isn’t money meant to buy mandazis,” he said.
The ODM leader said we are currently witnessing a level of corruption never seen in the country before and that it has the makings of a criminal enterprise working from within the state itself, “We must reject attempts by this enterprise to turn the war against them into an affair of their communities and we must reject attempts by these criminals to target, criminalize and stigmatize investigative agencies.”
He said leaders who are stealing public resources are now fearless and bold and that a new notion in town is that they are good at making money, instead of earning it. “A thief is a thief, let’s not say someone is good at making money, nowadays they’ve come up with a new term, ‘making money’, instead of earning money,” he said, adding that instead of saying someone is good at stealing taxpayers’ money, they try to justify theft.
On development issues, he said it shouldn’t be ethnicized, given that all Kenyans are taxpayers, “Everyone is a taxpayer…we all pay taxes and nobody should come and say we are only going to develop areas which voted for us, every part of Kenya is entitled to development equally.” The former premier further said that the debt incurred by the government shouldn’t be wasted, given that all nations have debt, but what matters is what the money will be used for.