Winning an election is not necessarily a mark of wisdom, Mr Mbadi

Treasury CS John Mbadi speaks in Ndhiwa as his feud with Winnie Odinga escalates. [James Omoro, Standard]

Apparently, John Mbadi of the “Give Ruto his skunk” fame, believes that elective office is the prerequisite for offering counsel to those in power. In October 2022, Mbadi told his colleagues in Parliament that William Ruto’s Cabinet nominees were incompetent and unqualified, and that approving them was tantamount to giving the President “his skunk”. At the time, it sounded like bold and legitimate criticism. 

The tragedy today is that Mr Mbadi now sits at the helm of the National Treasury, defending the economic policies of the same man whose Cabinet he ridiculed. And having crossed the Rubicon, Mbadi is determined to police who has the right to advise the leaders he once attacked. Such arrogance is stupendous.

The belief that a ballot paper confers intellectual superiority is one of the most ridiculous fictions in Kenya. Ideas do not emerge from ballot boxes. Wisdom does not reside in party membership cards. A voter who has lived through hunger, insecurity and collapsing public services understands those realities far better than the politician who flies above them in a helicopter. The notion that such a voter must first win an elective seat before their counsel is valid is the defensive crouch of leaders terrified of being found out.

History reminds us of leaders who believed their positions made them infallible, and whose countries paid dearly for that vanity. Robert Mugabe came to power in Zimbabwe as a liberator. After almost four decades in power, his failure was not the doing of the West, as he claimed, but of his incompetence, buried in a paternalistic leadership mentality that viewed power as an inheritance to be enjoyed within close family circles. 

He stopped listening and Zimbabwe stopped working. Idi Amin stripped Uganda of its professional class, expelled the Asian community that buoyed its economy, and then started a war with Tanzania that ended his reign in disgrace. He was the smartest man in every room he entered, until the rooms ran out.

Kenya’s political turncoats make this dynamic grotesque. The men and women who vowed, on public platforms, that they would rather perish than share a government with Ruto now sit in his Cabinet defending his every policy with the fervour of the newly converted. Here, Mbadi is not alone. 

His colleague Opiyo Wandayi justified Adani deals with fiery passion, only to be left with egg on his face when Ruto cancelled those same deals. And then there is Hassan Joho. These are not men of principle; they are opportunists who, having acquired power, now construct theories about who deserves to speak truth to it.

In the US, Abraham Lincoln drew on advisers, critics and ordinary citizens, assembling a team of rivals because he understood that leadership requires the best available thinking, not the most loyal available flattery. Nelson Mandela, upon release after 27 years in prison, did not tell South Africans they had no right to counsel him because they had not endured Robben Island. He listened, because governance without broad input is autocracy.

Mbadi is instructive on this point. His remarks on free education funding being unsustainable ignited fierce public discontent, and he had to retract his statement that there was no money to employ JSS teachers on permanent terms. A man who dismisses unelected voices as unqualified to advise leaders was corrected by public pressure from unelected citizens. The irony should not be lost on him.

Kenya will stagnate until its leaders develop the humility to separate the worth of an idea from the electoral history of the person offering it. A schoolteacher in Turkana who understands why pupils go hungry is no less qualified to advise on education policy because he or she has never filed nomination papers. Leadership is not the monopoly of office holders. It is a service rendered to all the people whose voices do not require endorsement from the IEBC to be valid.

Mbadi and his ilk would do well to remember what became of leaders who stopped listening. They did not go down in history as visionaries, but as cautionary tales.