Mwai Kibaki: A promise to root out corruption

From the President of Kenya's inauguration speech in Nairobi

Corruption will cease to be a way of life in Kenya. I call upon all those members of my government and public officers accustomed to corrupt practices to know and clearly understand that there will be no sacred cow under my government.

One would have preferred to overlook some of the all-too- obvious human errors and forge ahead, but it would be unfair not to raise questions about deliberate actions or policies of the past that continue to have grave consequences on the present. We are, however, not going to engage in witch hunting.

The economy, which has been underperforming in the past decade, is going to be my first priority. There is deepening poverty in the country. Millions of people have no jobs. The list is endless. My government will embark on policies geared to economic reconstruction, employment creation and immediate rehabilitation of the collapsed infrastructure.

Key areas are: greater access to affordable health care and reforming delivery of social services; to refocus on agriculture and tourism as drivers of the economy; privatisation of non-performing public enterprises in a transparent manner; improvement of security through retraining, re-equipping and reorientation of the security and armed forces.

I am inheriting a country badly ravaged by years of misrule and ineptitude. There has been a wide disconnection between people and government and between people's aspirations and the government's attitude towards them. We shall reconstruct public institutions to match them with the demands of a modernising society.

The authority of parliament and the independence of the judiciary will be restored and enhanced as part of the democratic culture that we have undertaken to foster.