Why Uhuru’s speech offers hope

It was a speech meant to reassure a country ill at ease with itself; a country in dire need of a voice of reason and hope.

And indeed, Uhuru Kenyatta’s inauguration speech was a sobering and reflective treatise. Which, if nothing else, served to uplift the country by mapping out a way to heal the widening rifts caused by election politics and economic circumstances.

As he sets out on his final term, it didn’t matter that he faced a chorus of 'illegitimacy' from his main challenger, Raila Odinga, who pulled out of the October 26 repeat election.

Uhuru's candour brought out his grasp of the magnitude of the challenges that lie ahead. Surely, he must know that at stake now is his legacy. Nothing else. Uhuru offered solutions to the myriad challenges we face. Time will tell whether he will achieve them.

To be fair, certain quick wins stand out from his first term:

After overseeing the disbursement of more than Sh1 trillion, counties have now become centres of economic development; nearly half-a-million people having boarded the Sh300 billion Madaraka Express train since its launch in June, while millions of homes have been connected to the national electric power grid, thanks to the Last Mile Connectivity project. More roads have been added to the road network.

There has also been significant reduction in maternal deaths and an increase in universal healthcare coverage. In education, credibility in exams has been restored while technical and vocational training has been enhanced. So much done, but so much remaining to be done.

Uhuru has pledged to power on with more reforms in healthcare - targeting 100 per cent coverage of the National Hospital Insurance Fund - and have 500,000 new home owners in five years. His vow to create opportunities for the millions of jobless youths and to strengthen the ties that bind Kenyans must top his agenda.

The cause of the widespread grievance is the feeling by many that they have been excluded; that the rungs have been removed from the ladder of opportunity. No doubt, creating jobs and opportunity will help to defuse this ticking time bomb.

He alluded to re-engineering the agricultural sector. That is one sure way to create jobs. For example, introducing value-addition thereby making agriculture gainful and a worthwhile endeavour will absorb a lot of the jobless youngsters.

By any measure, this was not one of Uhuru’s best speeches. He did not spell out how he will reform the Civil Service - that slow-moving, expensive, corruption-laden behemoth. Or specifically, how he will deal with the corruption that sullied his first term. It is disappointing that there was no mention of the word corruption in the 3,900-word speech.

Besides admonishing civil servants that it won’t be business-as-usual again, there was little else. Indeed, the bloated, pampered Civil Service gobbles up nearly three-quarters of taxpayers’ funds at the expense of development and other social services.

Yet the President must acknowledge somewhat that to facilitate and deliver his agenda, the Civil Service will have to change how it transacts business and that he must personally wage the war against corruption, which he once admitted was a “threat to national security”.

In addition to fiscal discipline (which he spelt out as a key legislative agenda), dealing with the canker of corruption offers the best hope of tackling some of the intractable challenges facing the country.

There are those who might question the sense of renewal partly because of what we have witnessed in the last six months, when our politicians engaged in the lowest forms of skulduggery culminating in a contested election win; or because in the past, new dawns have proved to be false dawns.

Mr Kenyatta carries with him the hopes of a whole country. He should not disappoint. Kenyans expect nothing less from him.

He should make his office consequential - by transforming our politics and making it a means to an end rather than an end in itself.

As a start, he should prudently use his party’s super-majority in Parliament for the common good and avoid using it to entrench his rule and advance sectarian, self-serving interests.

Since taking office in 2013, Uhuru has sought to reset Kenya’s position in the region and continent. For far too long, Kenya had punched below its weight despite being the region’s powerhouse. Kenya’s economy (worth $63.40 billion in 2015) is the biggest in the region, boosted by its liberalism, better infrastructure, a well-educated human resource pool and robust technology. In four years, he has recast the image of Kenya from an inward-looking, timid country to one ready to welcome the world and do business with it.

His latest initiative to open up the country in line with Pan-Africanism is welcome.