Is Ruto running away from troubles trailing his leadership?

Did President William Ruto hoax the country, or did he believe, in good conscience, that he had a great message for Kenya? On Thursday, the country waited with bated breath, for Ruto’s televised national address. In the end, it was the case of Aesop’s Mountain giving birth to a little mouse.

Ruto reminded us that Kenya once enjoyed social and economic parity with Southeast Asian Tiger nations. Nothing new about this. It is a good refrain, whenever there is nothing new to say. The President lamented that even small East African countries have overtaken Kenya. This is not a secret. Even the snail will overtake undisciplined nations, whose VVIP grand SUVs, matatus, uber, motorbikes and even pedestrians behave the same in traffic.

The President is inviting every Kenyan to what he believes “will become  the most consequential national conversation since the adoption of our Constitution in 2010.” He proposes to roll out, next week, a development visionary agenda, towards the year 2060. Like most African presidents, he speaks the language of politics. He does not speak the language of social ethics and values. This is where the problem begins and ends.

Indiscipline, theft, infatuation with freebies, laziness, lies and bribery by the political class especially; ukabila, election stealing, campaigning for five years – these are our setbacks. Get rid of these things and Kenya will turn around in two years. We don’t need to throw good money after bad money with more conferences, minutes, files, memoranda, and abracadabra.

Discipline and ethics in State House, especially, will fix everything. It is difficult, therefore, to see why State House would place the nation on hold for hours, only for them to end up with an underwhelming speech that echoes Mao Ze Dong in China, and Pol Pot in Cambodia, in a gone age. Leaders put up that kind of show when they want to divert attention from something dominating the public mind. But even then, they will normally come up with something truly earth-shaking; a message that is at once intellectually and emotionally engaging. 

The Ruto address came in the wake of trouble in the Cabinet. The Executive is engrossed in inter-tribal public competitions and insults. Ministers are calling their colleagues hyenas. They are telling their tribesmen that they have asked the President to reduce the number of hyenas in the Cabinet. Those being called hyenas are not taking the slurs lying down. They are giving as much as they are taking. It is a free-for-all Cabinet mudslinging, all the way into social media. 

Such is a muddled-up government. There is chaos everywhere. Ministers at war on social media and at rallies. The deputy president under siege. Speculation rife that he could be on the way out. The President’s political brokers and bailiffs at work; dangling the DP’s position at auctions to tribal chiefs across the country.

In the streets, goons have taken over. Amid the chaos, the auditor general asks us to go slow.  We are broke. We could grind to a screeching halt. We are spending seven out of every ten shillings of revenue to settle debts. We are splashing what remains on lavish living within top brass ranks. We are paying billions of shillings into ghost hustler fund accounts.

We have closed half a million Hustler Fund bank accounts before hundreds of millions of shillings are repaid.

Our affordable housing programme is fraught with oversight black holes. The Controller of Budget reports that up to Sh63 billion are annually spent here with no independent oversight.

For its part, the Social Health Insurance (SHA) has multiple billings and claims. The Auditor-General reports critical failures in ICT in the fund, as well as widespread fraud. At IEBC, they are planning to legislate how to hide election results.

The national debt soars at about Sh12.82 trillion, far worse than the present government found it. Kenya is in a horrific place, contrary to the confidence that President Ruto exuded as he announced the coming of Kenya Vision 2060, and invoked Chairman Mao’s Great Leap Forward, and Pol Pot’s Super Great Leap Forward. When Mao and Pol Pot become our models, we have cause not just to worry, but to fear. History does not remember them for anything kind.

But Ruto was perhaps trying to divert attention from the rise of Edwin Sifuna, IEBC, or the civil war in his government; or all. Is it also possible that Sifuna was planning to launch something along the same lines, and Ruto is pre-empting him? The vibes, after all, sounded like the late Raila Odinga’s. Sifuna would know them.

-Dr Muluka is a strategic communications adviser.