A report allegedly placing President William Ruto as the second most corrupt leader globally is circulating and gaining traction at the speed of lightning. Yet, the unfortunate thing is that its erroneous source, laced with malice, is as stark as a naked witch in the darkness of the night.
For the simple reason that the report is neither scientific nor self-effacing, with the organization that has put up the report clearly stating that the voting by a section of Kenyans was due to the failed Finance Bill of 2024.
The dubious Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) acknowledges President Ruto is on their non-scientific list simply because of the Finance Bill 2024 that angered Kenyans online.
The Bill, as all may recall, had nothing to do with corruption! For OCCRP to rely on some fugitive 40,000 online votes to come up with such a report is, in itself, criminal against a sovereign state.
“However, since the award is given to the person who has done ‘the most to wreak havoc around the world through organized crime and corruption,’ they ultimately chose Assad as the winner,” reads part of this report.
The OCCRP on its website says the more than 40,000 who allegedly wrote to vote to nominate President William Ruto for the Person of the Year was unprecedented.
In other words, the numbers were unusually high given their past records.
Needless to mention, OCCRP prides itself as an investigative journalism platform, yet in this report, no form of investigation whatsoever was done and instead based the report on some social media facade to draw conclusions.
Since President Ruto went ahead to appoint the Broad-Based Government allowing opposition members to join the ranks and file of his administration, some section of supporters of former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua has gone overdrive to besmirch President Ruto’s efforts to unite the country.
It is the same ilk of hateful Kenyans online who have gone to de-campaign former Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s bid for the Africa Union Chairperson. Thank God they have no votes when Presidents and Heads of State converge in Addis Ababa next month to determine the winner!
Suffice it to say, that they have found among other avenues this OCCRP vote to pile mud at the President at every opportunity to support their beleaguered tribal and genocidal tribal seer.
It is also possible that Kenyans, known in the past to vote multiple times for their persons to win in an online voting, must have found one or two of them sitting on several devices to push for this vote and woodwink an international organization to believe it was many Kenyans voting.
This brings to question the scientific approach to such voting with respect to eliminating open biases so as to present a truly representative population.
It is unfair that OCCRP has not made any effort to show its sampling method and the quality of the sample involved in this vote.
This has tainted these results and has shown OCCRP to be involved in what is described as lying with statistics.
So, what would OCCRP gain by presenting blatant lies to besmirch the name of a sitting and a democratically elected President?
Long gone are the times when imperialists and modern-day colonists referred to Africa as the “Dark Continent,” but when a section of unscrupulous Kenyans online, disappointed in the way their selfish political interests have been thwarted, have found partners in crime to push their genocidal interest, they form a powerful powder keg.
For a country with a population of 50 million, it is foolhardy to imagine and believe some unknown, unidentified, and unscrupulous 40,000 odd keyboard warriors to use hate to tell if our President is the most corrupt in the world.
The OCCRP must be called out for its red herring and wild goose chase working with online busybodies to settle political scores in a stable and tranquil African state.
Such open international criminal activity against our nation must be stopped and nipped in the bud.
By the end of the day, Kenyans must have a deep reflection and jealously guard our democracy and peace.
Our freedom of expression as enshrined in the 2010 Constitution is a jewel that must never be abused.
Those of us who have traveled in many African countries will agree that this nation, Kenya, enjoys so much economic and political freedom.
At times, we forget and abuse these freedoms that are an envy of many of our neighbors and the rest of the continent.
We must never take it for granted that we have relatively very high internet fiber connectivity, that we can wake up and open any social media account, and that we can register very easily any telephone number without much ado.
Such freedoms remain a pipe dream among many African citizens, and we had better be thankful for the bounty and remain ethical, factual, responsible, and reasonable as we enjoy them.
OCCRP, that calls itself one of the largest investigative journalism organizations in the world, headquartered in Amsterdam and with staff across six continents, is as fake as the so-called corruption report was.
One can easily conclude that this is lazy, unprofessional, and can only be termed as a busybody akin to Kenya’s briefcase non-profits with no spine nor track record in what they do.
It is certainly not an outfit that is a mission-driven nonprofit newsroom that partners with other media outlets to publish stories that lead to real-world action, as it may want us to believe.
OCCRP is pretentious and shameless in its underhand mission to destabilize Africa – a wolf in sheep’s skin ready to maul without detection.
