Youthful Jubilee administration ruling through same old tired ideas

David Ndii, in a recent article in the Saturday Nation, had few kind words to say on the performance of the UhuRuto government, also called the Jubilee government, as it starts the second half of its rule.

Contrary to its original claim of being young, fresh, innovative, dynamic and performance oriented (kusema na kutenda), two years down the line it has proved to be young in body but old in thinking; not that there is anything wrong in being old. But there is something wrong when you disdain “old” in theory and then continue to adopt the same old habits that you claim you loath. The English call that hypocrisy.

Innovation: being digital and going digital was going to be Jubilee’s hallmark and means towards rapid innovation in changing society for the better. Young and dynamic, they were ready to blow the fresh air of innovation into every sector of society, polity and economy. But here again, there has not only been inertia but a curious and disappointing rolling back of the clock to the old and tired Kanu days. And the key stimulators and fertilizers of blocking innovation are corruption and bad governance.

The 2010 Constitution which Kenyans welcomed with open arms and continue to be excited about neither excites nor gives hope to the Jubilee government. Everything is done to frustrate its implementation, including using the tyranny—not democracy—of numbers in the National Assembly to undermine the innovative character of the Constitution. Without this constitutional innovativeness, improving accountability in government, respecting the basic individual and people’s rights and providing a place to feel at home for and by all Kenyans irrespective of race, class, belief, country of origin, become mere pipe dreams.

But Jubilee is determined to undermine the Constitution: this was recently epitomised by the passage of draconian amendments to security-related laws by a lawless National Assembly set in motion by a Speaker gone rogue. Had it not been for the resistance waged by the Opposition and some civil society groups, Kenya would now have been on her way to a Gestapo-ruled potato republic.

Jubilee leaders have obviously taken a keen interest in reading Hitler’s Mein Kampf, a justification for political exclusion based on race; in essence not very different from political exclusion based on tribe when justified on largely jingoistic and chauvinist terms.

Two things have happened in Jubilee’s attempts to being innovative and going digital. One is the laptop project to schools which was sent packing by the age old rent seeking habits of power wielders in an authoritarian regime.

The Kenren fertilizer plant of the early 1970s was derailed by corruption and went down the same route during the Kenyatta (the father of Uhuru) regime. The pupils in Siaya were right when they demonstrated, right from the beginning of the laptop project: “hatutaki laptop tunataka masomo”— ie, “we don’t want laptops: we want education”. Laptops they have not received to this very day; but promises that they are on the way have now become an opium to reduce discontent to passive silence. Education seems to be bedeviled by flip flopping in policies, unsettled conflicts and disagreements between government and teachers over conditions and terms of service.

In the Kanu regime, the projects swindled were small in nature and the biggest area of primitive accumulation was land. The state was defrauded, the national and local government exchequers lost money in terms of unpaid land rents and land rates, and due to crass oppression, the ordinary Kenyans then had very little voice to speak against these injustices.

The corruption now, however is mega and affects mega projects. The money pocketed by elites now in government run into the billions, making “chicken gate” look like chicken feed. The Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) project is an investment running into billions of dollars. The kickbacks left in Dubai are equally counted in billions of Kenya shillings. Added together, we get the stock of our debt that we are going to pay all our life, our children will do the same and our grandchildren will be equally mortgaged. A good project conceived since the NARC government; but wrongly implemented because of mega greed! Indeed all the infrastructure projects currently being implemented by Jubilee date back to both the NARC and Coalition government days: Jubilee has only perfected the art of harvesting from them.

Rather than call the attention of Kenyans to this rip off, we are engaged in side shows of so-called “waging war against corruption” from State House and Harambee Annex focussed on other things other than where the big chiefs are currently eating. Kenyans are not likely to be fooled: the Constitution now opens many avenues for “watchdogging”. And the enemy of the regime has, of course, been identified as constitutional offices charged with the responsibility of accountability in government, upholding human rights and bringing to book those transgressors and lords of impunity.

These bodies have their budgets slashed, their mandates illegally amended (Auditor General) and a quiet war of attrition waged against them in the corridors of power. The IEBC, having raped the rights of Kenyans for free and fair elections, is jealously protected by Jubilee. We insist: we are not going to the next election with the Hassan-led IEBC.

Going digital, to Jubilee, has meant waging digital wars. The so-called digital war with the media owners was unnecessary, uncalled for and diversionary. It can only be explained by conflicts of interest that some captains of government have found themselves faced with in pushing the media houses to go digital. Even if it is true—which it is not—that they have delayed unnecessarily to go digital, it is only rational to give them time to do so without hurting their investments by suffering a huge transaction cost in the change process. Only one driven by political hubris and economic sadism would put genuine and important players in the domestic economy through that kind of experience.

Is the Jubilee government young and dynamic? Young, yes; but dynamic, no. Why not? Jubilee identified the wrong variable as their enemy right from the word go. This wrong enemy was the biological human quality called age. Save for ailments that tend to attack senior citizens so as to lose their faculties and slow down their physical motion, old people who maintain good health can be as sharp as a razor at 90 and as swift as a bullet train at the same age. Look at Sir Charles Njonjo at the ripe age of 90 plus.

The problem, dear UhuRuto, is not in our age but in our mind and mental health. When your mind and mental health is under the attack by the disease of grabiosis (as the youth in Jubilee leadership are) you end up tear-gassing pupils when they protest against the grabbing of their play field.

Such things happened during the Kanu regimes which, of course, the current generation of Jubilee top brass, are closely related to. The thinking is static is either backwards or static; the age is different.

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