A country which is steeped in corruption cannot expect its policemen to be anything but corrupt. And this for at least two reasons. The first is that if by corruption we mean the really big ripoffs that take place at the apex of society, then the culprits cannot be interested in stamping it out of the police.

There is one reason for this. Since the police are the force whose job it is to arrest criminals, the big fish will be keen to grease their palms so that police turn another way whenever they see a big man stealing.

The second reason is that policemen are also human beings. And their "humanity" becomes especially manifest when - as in our case - we remunerate them so poorly.

In a society where Ministers, top civil servants, high-powered parastatal executives, nabobs in the private sector, high priests, top Opposition politicians etc., do not even know how to cover their rapacity and graft in any finery, how can they expect that the polloi will not covet them?

Thus, whenever we hear the public condemning corruption among the upper econo- political class, it is more a result of jealousy than of any moral conviction. In Nairobi, as in most parts of Kenya, most people are not engaged in big ripoffs merely because they have no opportunity to do so.

But everybody can see them engaged in their own small-time "rip-offs": petty pilfering, petty forgeries, petty hits-and-runs, petty cheating, confidence tricks, matatu extortions - all kinds of stratagems in order to come by small change with which to take care of the really pressing needs of the moment.

But policemen not only have the opportunity but also even the power to do so. The temptations to which they are exposed can only be described as agonising. They are acquainted with a great deal of fiddling and fraud all over the place.

So as they arrest some of the culprits, they are always tempted to devise their own methods of pocketing some of the loot which they impound. Why not? If the boss is doing it, why not I? And here "the boss" does not necessarily mean the Police Commissioner.

The boss here can be Cabinet Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, departmental directors, managing directors of parastatals, executive chairmen of public (as well as private) corporations, bishops, Imams dons, party leaders what-have-you.

But as in all walks of life in our society, the police force is intricately graduated and "classified". If it has its own big fish, it also has its own minnows, who do not have the opportunity to partake of the really viscous dough.

So they, too, like the rest of the polloi are confined to small-time milking: gleaning what little morsels they can lay their hands on from petty traffic offenders, "public nuisances" vagrants, petty house-breakers, and what our newspapers are wont to call "suspects".

These "suspects" always remind the keen observer of the situation that the lower-rank policemen - corporals and constables - are never averse to framing people in order to extort bribes from them.

We know all these things from none other than Kenya's chief lawman, Attorney-General Amos Wako. Early this week, he spoke most passionately, accusing his own police force of "not doing their job properly" and thus being the root-cause of corruption and other crimes.

Mr Wako enumerated a number of sins of both omission and commission in which the police force is engaged. They included the fact that traffic offences and other crimes are being perpetrated under the very noses of policemen on the beat.

Litigation files are frequently "disappearing" from the registries of our courts of law because, said the Attorney-General, "the files have either not been forwarded and where for warded, the consent or directions have long since been given."

The question is stark. So what is the news here, Mr Wako? Haven't the public made these and a million other complaints for decades while his chamber listened and did nothing? Why is Mr Wako feeding us with fare with which we have been fed again and gain ad nauseam?

What is even more significant, why is he blaming only the minnows among the policemen? Are their bosses not even more rapacious? Why is he so silent about the mother of all crimes, about the cash-mongering by cheques that takes place between banks and top-notch politicians between banks and banks, between banks and other commercial houses and between banks and certain religious organisations?

Was he not the same Attorney-General who - in circumstances that raised eyebrows - invoked his powers to stop certain Kenyans, with a perfect locus standi, from prosecuting certain other Kenyans alleged to be involved in the ignominious Goldenberg scandal?

In this he served as a dangerous precedent for executive meddling and thus paved the way for Cabinet colleague Simeon Nyachae to declare certain Treasury potentates "innocent" when a legitimate authority sought to prosecute them for alleged venality in office.

There is a whole plethora of questions that can be put to Mr Wako in regard to this habit of passing the buck to the poor, not only for their poverty and powerlessness but also as the chief victims of crime and bad government.

But, even infinitely more important than that, the Attorney-General's Office was created with action in mind. The Attorney-General himself is expressly the chief legal adviser to the Government on all actions that it must take to ensure that "the rule of law" is effectively implemented.

His job is not to stand in a public rostrum merely to describe certain social processes or practices that run athwart "the rule of law.

What irked most about his statement against the police, then, was not simply that he was at last admitting what all other Kenyans have known from practical suffering at the hands of the police for a long time, but also that he said exactly nothing about what he intends to do about it.

When push comes to shove, we want no word at all from the Attorney-General or any of his high officials. What we want from him is an articulate programme of action aimed at extirpating corruption and crime from our midst.

What is lacking, quite clearly is the spice of public action. But perhaps to expect that the Attorney-General's Office and the Government in general can eradicate corruption is to put the cat before the horse.

The leader of a successful national liberation movement was horrified after installing his movement in power, to find that most of his colleagues were involved in the very same nefarious practices that had characterised the old bureaucracy.

But he was socially conscious enough to know that passing the buck to the bottom of society could not solve the problem. So he invoked his anti-corruption squad: "Storm headquarters".

In Kenya, if we are really serious about eliminating legal, political as well as economic corruption, we must begin by storming such headquarters as the police beat on Harambee Avenue, the Attorney-General's Chambers, Harambee House, State House, party headquarters and the head offices of all public (as well as private) organisations.

I do not know what form this "storming" might take. But at least we could begin by requiring all public officials whose job it is to implement law and policy to stop yapping and begin implementing those laws and policy, opening their mouths only when they have something to tell us about the stage the implementation process has reached.

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