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BREAKING NEWS: LSK PRESIDENT FAITH ODHIAMBO REFUSES TO JOIN RUTO'S DEBT AUDITING
TEAM


Caption for the landscape image:


HERE’S OPPORTUNITY TO CLEAN THE SLATE

Thursday, July 04, 2024

Scroll down to read the article

Demonstrator during anti-tax protests in Nairobi on June 20, 2024.

Photo credit: Evans Habil | Nation Media Group

By  Mutuma Mathiu

Media consultant at Steward-Africa and former Editor-in-Chief of Nation Media
Group.

 * Summary
 * Article
 * Related


WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

 * President Ruto was merely the tone-deaf cook who was in the kitchen when it
   caught fire.
 * To his credit, Mr Ruto is bold and has clear thinking


THANK YOU FOR READING NATION.AFRICA



Show plans

This is a December 12, 1963, moment. A moment of mementous change and state
formation. Kenya’s tribal, rent seeking political culture, based on a narrow
group of tribal elites plundering the public coffers and cornering the country’s
best opportunities for themselves, their families, relatives and cronies, has
for all intents and purposes been deposed.

President Ruto was merely the tone-deaf cook who was in the kitchen when it
caught fire, the guy who seriously believed that a kakistocracy can balance the
budget, that our doctors and engineers are content with menial jobs abroad and
that a call centre in second hand heels and lipstick covering half the face (ICT
Hub) is our most brilliant contribution to the post-web, AI-driven digital world
of today.

The Kenyan state as now constituted – which delivered an army that was
slaughtered by rag-tag militia at El Ade, a police force whose snipers shoot
children in the head, an economy which collects more taxes than any other in
East Africa but runs museum piece trains, a bureaucracy that can’t explain in
simple terms how it spent Sh6 trillion debt (if you go by Jimmy Wanjigi’s maths)
and a dishonest society stuck in cults and witchcraft – is toast. The young
generation, the majority, said it doesn’t want any part of that, fix it or it
will.

Outside of those bending over the feeding trough, no one is proud of our
political culture; it does not produce honesty, patriotism and an attitude of
sacrifice, only longer snouts. There is no continuity, no values, no training,
no organised succession; a succeeding regime does not take over the good ideas
of the previous, the country is a patchwork of five-year or, at best, 10-year
spurts of mainly shots in the dark. Not even the 2010 Constitution could cure
this blood-sucking vampiric edifice.


FAIRER FUTURE

On June 25, Gen Zs gave us an opportunity to clean the slate and draw a better,
cleaner, fairer future for our children. President Ruto can try and feed more
blood to the damaged vampire in the hope of keeping it alive and, hopefully,
curing whatever infected it. Or he can grab the opportunity, rally the country
and together we can devise a more effective, fairer, stable system. Anyone
dreaming of 2027 is setting themselves up for heartbreak. If you interact with
Gen Zs you know that even if they don’t come out to the streets, their minds are
already made up: they will vote, all the folks in office will go home and the
Matiang’is, Okiya Omatatas, Sifunas and Babu Owinos will take power.

To his credit, Mr Ruto is bold and has clear thinking. But his feet are stuck in
the glue of his Moist tutelage. He might try to preserve the current beast and
ride it to a totalitarian future, he will not succeed. The pressure will come
from inside, but also from the outside: The 56th session of the UN Human Rights
Council is taking place in Geneva, activists will be trying to make a scene
there. Kenya Kwanza’s staunchest supporters are facing tight elections in the
west, the last thing they want is baggage. Besides, they don’t want to earn the
wrath and hatred of the Kenyan population, they are always playing politics to
look good. And a government without the support of the population is always on a
timer and time will run out.


MEDIA GRANDEES

The President when he faced the three media grandees – Mr Linus Kaikai, Joe
Ageyo and Eric Latif – who gave him a thorough work out, said one of his biggest
problems is that his government did not communicate well. Mohamed Welihye, the
banker and social media pundit, often observes that the mistake Mr Ruto made was
to take his campaign to government. A campaign communications team pummels,
confuses, intimidates and demoralises the opposition, on top of selling the
candidate. The team has continued to sell the candidate and treat the country as
the opposition. The result is widespread resistance and resentment.

Mr Ruto came across as a man who is not given to being challenged or told what
to do. Those kinds of bosses are difficult to advise, subordinates play safe and
hide information. And he is rarely more than a few feet from a live mike. When
you are over-exposed and over-reported, people tune out, stop listening
(familiarity breeds contempt) and you accumulate a large stock of inevitable
contradictions and errors which are subsequently exploited.

But he is right: out of ignorance or contempt, the government has stopped
selling its policies. I heard about Mr Ruto’s ambition to balance the budget in
about four years during the interview. And I heard today, the real target and
intent of the fallen Land Bill – it is not your grandfather’s ancestral quarter,
it is the large holdings in Nairobi and its environments which enjoy city
services without paying a dime. If Mr Ruto had taken the time to explain to the
country in an effective manner what he was doing and why, the fight would not
have been about taxes, it would have been about corruption and impunity, and
that is an easier fight.

So, Kenya will either re-invent itself today or in 2027 at the latest. The
bloody die is cast.

Mr Mathiu, a media consultant at Steward-Africa, is a former Editor-in-Chief of
Nation Media Group. Mmutuma@Steward-Africa.com.




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