How bottom-up plan turned into top-up mission

Today is Day 777 since President William Ruto was inaugurated into office, and 812 days since the August 2022 election.  There are 1,015 days to the next election on August 10, 2027. 

Then, as our latest distraction, we have a Senator proposing to add another 730 days to this administration’s term. Remember, it’s also 733 days since our first batch of Cabinet Secretaries were sworn in, and 110 days since most of them were fired. The new lot, including many of the old lot, have been in office for 82 days. For the record, it’s 126 days since Gen Z stormed Parliament. 

It is telling that my favourite Sunday Standard highlighted 774 days as Ruto’s rollercoaster. Because, despite their ostensible cleverness, these people are all over the place.

In this overall mess of things, we have a Deputy President designate waiting to be sworn in and an impeached Deputy President who will not leave. So we are relying on an underfunded Judiciary to be the adult in the room. 

Lest we forget, the Judiciary gets half of the money thrown at our National Intelligence Service. Our taxes prioritize spying over justice. One aim of justice is to secure and guarantee personal and property rights, which spies quickly take away. 

President William Ruto receives a wheelbarrow as a gift from residents in Mathira,Nyeri,  on October 31,2020. After he presided over a fundraiser to support a women group and a bodaboda Sacco. [File, Standard]

It is almost as if we prefer “victor’s justice” to “justice as fairness”.  When justice is the balance we need between our security on one hand, and our rights and freedoms on the other.  As a precursor to the peace that then creates a different balance between prosperity and progress. 

This administration didn’t start the problem, but it is not keen to resolve it.  All the “we will build and respect institutions” talk during campaigns is now “politics is a contact sport”. 

This is the convoluted logic of our country today.  It is also the reason why our current mess adds a premium to the political risk often factored into domestic and foreign investment in Kenya. And it signifies an administration that seems unable to implement its election manifesto. 

Unable is probably the wrong word, because there is ability. The correct word might be unwilling.  In other words, it’s not about capacity, it’s about incentives. And our incentives are all wrong. 

Because the politics of our economy, or political economy, is neither a “bottom-up” (or pro-poor) or “top-down” (or trickle down) stance. What we have is a “top-up” stance. This is a stance that has pretty much given up on Kenya and any sort of inclusive policy. It is a stance that prioritizes personal primitive accumulation.

As religious leaders said last week on that Senate proposal, “we’ve had two years of this, how can we afford a seven year term?”.  I thought I was the only one who felt that the past two years have felt like a decade until I saw a clever comment on X that suggested that it feels like we’ve been through two centuries with this administration. But they are tone deaf to the idea, calling out “squealers” in their tax effort when they cannot cut wasteful cost behaviour.

And that’s just the “budget” cost of government, not its far worse “policy” or “planning” cost.  Because that’s where our real corruption happens.  Take the current Adani cases in court.  In the simplest way to explain it, our courts have put these deals on hold.  

That is, the JKIA and KETRACO PPPs before we get to SHIF accusations.  Take the JKIA example.  

As far as we know, KAA’s consultants presented two scenarios.  First,  a 15-year US$ 755 million Terminal PPP that would have required US$500 million in additional KAA cash flow to build a second runway. Then, a 30-year US$1.6 billion second runway Airport PPP.  The first scenario would lose money, the second would make money.  Then we sat down with Adani to create a non-competitive Terminal PPP without a second runway but with three hotels at a total cost of US$2 billion. Add the idea that this Adani proposal for the hotels, using public land not envisaged in the advice offered by the consultants, are also on a 30-year PPP.  What are we signing off on? 

The KETRACO deal is likely worse. The official argument is that we are close to the end of our borrowing and debt limit, hence the need for private sector capital, but the reality is these self-financed PPPs will end up bloating our air ticket and electricity costs.  

Naturally, suspicions arise on who is behind these deals. 

The larger emergent picture is we have a leadership that is transmogrifying what should be an exciting pro-poor policy adventure into our default of primitive accumulation.  In other words, what we have is a “top-up” agenda.  It is driven by self-interested transactional behaviour to deliver policy responses for the people. 

We don’t even need to bring in the university funding model.  The big idea is clear – let’s defund public education and health and throw it to private hands US-style. 

Private education and health means private sector buccaneers and profiteers. It transfers our debt problem from the public to the household purse. In a developing country. 

Their first semester was full of noise, and the second is chaotically uncertain.  This is how “bottom-up” promise becomes “top-up”.  It’s the stealing, stupid! Our vice as virtue. 

We are not even in the third semester, and the “Must Go” chants remain, but I want them to complete their term.  Because, at the rate they are going, I know the next 1,015 days will help us truly decide if we need them anymore in 2027.  By then, we might “return to reason”. Not now. Because we, as voters, will realize that it is “top-up” not “bottom-up” that needs a serious fix.