Our 10-point wish list for the New Year, 2015

It is the season to take stock of the year gone by as a country and make resolutions and wishes for a better 2015.

There is a lot to wish for and the economy is atop nearly everyone’s list of hopes for the New Year. This year, we need economic initiatives that will not only stop wasteful and extravagant consumption, but reduce the public wage bill.

Indicators are pointing to improvement, but patience is in order since the economy has quite a way to go to return to normal. We need more jobs and better growth numbers. Let us not just demand a share of the cake, but make it a point as a nation to bake a huge one with guaranteed sufficient slices for all of us.

Terrorists turned our country into a playground in 2014, but this should not happen in the New Year.

We wish for better security for our lives and property. Over and beyond the appointment of Joseph Nkaissery as Interior cabinet secretary, the police force needs leadership and direction and we hope to get a new Inspector General to steer a professional, technology-driven and graft-free security force.

Of course this will not stop diversity of opinion. Disagreement is one of the joys of freedom and we hope for tough political and philosophical competition in Parliament and the Senate.

But our democratic system would be healthier if our politicians reserved the harshest invective for things that are genuinely monstrous like terrorism, so we pray for an end to political rivalries tempered by arrogance and the constellation of tribal bigotry in the New Year.

Our country is big and there is much to ask for but we will make a modest wish. How about a little demonstration by Government of commitment to end graft and tribalism? President Uhuru Kenyatta conceded the Office of the President housed merchants of corruption, but one year later no head has rolled.

The inaction in the face of this monster threatening to pull our country down is, quite frankly, scary. We need fresh impetus in the fight to set things right.

Legislators, Government officials and civic leaders must stop talking ill about the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the countries perceived to be supporting its cause and strive for a better and more symbiotic relationship with the rest of the world.

We hope leaders will identify and coalesce around a solution to the industrial unrest and threats of strikes that plagued our country in 2014. Strikes by teachers, doctors, nurses and civil servants have to be averted to prevent further erosion of economic gains made towards achieving the ideals of Vision 2030.

Simply doing nothing and hoping for better times is not the best strategy.

It may be difficult to get everything right, but this will not deter us from dreaming a little and assuming that the Government will honour some broken promises like delivery of laptops to Standard One pupils, while putting more effort into stopping carnage on our roads, extra-judicial killings and needless deaths in hospitals because of lack of proper healthcare.

On behalf of sports lovers in the country, we hope the various bodies tasked with management of sports will resolve internal issues and find managers who can harness talent and build better teams that will make our country more competitive in football, rugby, boxing and other genres of sports.

Lastly, we pray our leaders will keep a good thing going and prove to be reliable with a steady hand on their jobs.