Who takes blame if broad based government fails, Ruto or Raila?

President William Ruto and ODM leader Raila Odinga. [PCS]

After two months of Gen-Z driven, subsequently goon-infiltrated, public protests that began with rejection of Finance Bill 2024, the question on observers’ minds – within and outside Kenya – is if President William Ruto’s Broad-Based Government (BBG) finally gets down to delivering the socio-economic turnaround and transformation he sold to Kenyans while on his 2022 campaign trail. 

There is a second question we cannot forget given violent official responses to initially peaceful, then chaotic, protests: clear political and police accountability for brutality, abductions and killings which happened during this two month period.  Lest we forget, the violence experienced in 2023 gave us National Dialogue Committee (NADCO). 

In 2024, it is BBG.  It cannot be that the loss of life and limb by young Kenyans is the deal collateral that underwrites our political stability. 

Especially in a country where politics feels like Groundhog Day, where everything repeats itself. 

If we do not address this second question, we add to our long-term issues; ranging from the call for better politics towards better politicians, to the better policing pathway towards better police. 

Arguably, on the earlier question, Ruto is back to Ground Zero.  On one hand, BBG recalibrates not just his government, but his agenda to turn government around.  On the other, BBG reboots his economic turnaround agenda that has so far been mostly mixed, moving in fits and starts.  

Though we likely missed this because of the excitement around the Olympics, and the “Nane Nane” protests, the president’s message to the new BBG cabinet during their swearing-in on August 8th was instructive in a number of ways.  Let us skim through his address in two parts. 

First, he surprisingly admitted to five realizations.  Sub-optimal public communication of his administration’s development agenda.  Insufficient engagement with the public (the public participation problem). 

A disconnect with citizens on the policies, programmes and projects being rolled out across the country.  Public servants not acting as servants of the people, and not acting with integrity. The people were tired of failure, inefficiency, corruption and ineptitude. 

He then spoke to the need to accelerate and turbocharge the transformation agenda with integrity, efficiency, transparency and inclusivity before offering support to the cabinet in discharging their mandates and “executing a reimagined and catalyzed transformation agenda”. 

He concluded his address by extolling a “new chapter in our country’s governance and development” having argued that our core debate as a nation is not about the end - a shared aspiration of “…governance that delivers security and prosperity, inclusively and sustainably” – but the means to this end.  This new framing by the president is itself worthy of further debate. 

Nevertheless, cabinet members were asked to be “team players, servant leaders, faithful trustees, effective stewards of the people’s interests and dependable custodians of their resources”. 

For the record, if we take August 8th as Day 1 of BBG, this is 695 days since the 2022 inauguration, 730 days since that election and 1,097 days (99 weeks) to the next one on August 10th, 2027. 

If we take out the final six months of campaign noise and excitement before the election, it means this new cabinet has roughly the same amount of time to work and deliver as the previous one.

From this 2027 lens, it will be intriguing to observe who will take credit if BBG works, or what happens to the players if it doesn’t, or things get worse.  Or, as a colleague better put it, who should we reward in 2027 if BBG is successful – the helped (Kenya Kwanza) or the helper (ODM)? And if it isn’t, shouldn’t we show them all the red card? We will have the answer in 99 weeks. 

This answer, of course, is based on the players currently at the leadership table, which excludes Gen Z.  Except that we now have three possible views of Gen Z.  Gen Z as the age identity of young people, Gen Z as the “Gen Zote” mood of the people, and Gen Z as the BBG leadership (which we might cheekily call “Gen Zakayo” or “Team Zakayo”). 

Think of the 2027 permutations -  Gen Z vs Team Zakayo to win Gen Zote, or Gen Zote vs Team Zakayo to win Gen Z.  It is surprising that this regime lacked the imagination to position as Gen Zote in response to Gen Z! 

But I digress. As we might better understand it, the BBG’s agenda is still based on the Bottom-Up Transformation Agenda (BETA), as rebooted and accelerated, rather reimagined and redone. 

Jobs, industrial development and wealth creation are BETA’s focus under its five pillars. It is BBG’s task to make this agenda work amidst a debt and fiscal crisis and global economic stress.   

The second part of the address which also received little media and public attention was eleven measures the President laid out for his BBG cabinet. Let’s look at these measures, which were designed for a transparency, accountability and anti-corruption focus in response to Gen Z.  

Measure 1 on personal surcharges for loss of public funds heroically presumes the loss (and its deliberate nature) can be proven in a fair justice system. This relies on Measure 4 to facilitate changes to the law to ensure complete investigation and prosecution of all corruption offences and economic crimes within six months while drawing on Measure 7 to work with justice, law and order institutions to expedite case resolution within specific time frames. 

Put simply, the first, fourth and seventh measures do not add up to a coherent whole.  That’s even before we get to the traditional promises to fix laws, like amending the Witness Protection Act and finalizing the Conflict of Interest Bill as Measures 5 and 6.  

Also, anyone familiar with corruption and economic crime reporting will know that there is either corruption in the actual reporting, or the person/institution reported to is might be actually be the criminal. 

Moving to pre-emptive measures, Measure 3 seeks a legal and institutional framework to vet all public officers and set up a wealth declaration repository across government.  What happened to lifestyle audits? 

Where does KRA – with its widespread access to data and information – fit into this framework?  Mostly, why are we unable to establish and leverage an integrated digital persons and assets identification infrastructure (persons-companies-land-assets) to help us here? 

In answer to the last question, it’s because we prefer piecemeal to integrated systems.  So we have Measure 2 to eliminate ghost worker payroll fraud and a completely unrelated Measure 9 to digitize procurement.  We’ve been talking about this stuff endlessly for at least a decade now. 

Measures 8 - to move to zero-based budgeting (which is already a mandatory requirement in every budget circular) - and 10 - to improve the VAT refund process – are also as old as the hills.  Which brings us to the 11th and final measure, to impose a protectionist stance to build local manufacturing and restrict imports. Why does this smell like a brand new gateway to corruption? 

BBG has just begun, but do you see or feel turnaround, or transformation?  Or do we have box-ticking from our usual crisis playbook? Going by this initial address, the jury is definitely still out.