Bouquet to Kenyans for making it a year of good harvest

By Billow Kerrow

It was a great year for this great nation, indeed a year of good harvest. It could have been better but for the awesome challenges this nation faced in recent years. It was a year of redemption, of pursuits of legacy by the principals, and of a nation that heaved a sigh of relief over some of its erstwhile elusive achievements.

The award winning performance of the year goes to the promulgation of the new Constitution, for which the ordinary Kenyans deserve a bouquet. After decades of elusive search, it was a moment of rebirth for the nation that rekindled our hopes and aspirations. There was a new criterion, a benchmark for good governance, and if you ran afoul of it, you risked enraging Kenyans. Still, the taste of the pudding is in the eating and we shall see how faithful our leaders will be to the new dispensation as 2012 heralds a new political ball game.

The second best award goes to our resilient economy that performed better than expected in spite of many external shocks. The GDP growth is expected to hit at least 5 per cent. However, the macroeconomic environment is still fluid – interest rates are on an upward trend due to the huge Government borrowing this year. Our public debt is hovering around Sh1.4 trillion, and just over 50 per cent of our GDP. Overall inflation was down to about 3 per cent much of the year but is expected to rise due to drought conditions and high fuel prices globally.

Of course, the robust economy did little to stifle the growing poverty strangling half the population. Yet, it was a year our rulers unveiled Sh1 trillion public spending plan, the biggest ever. Shortly, after the historic budget, we discovered that our numbers have also grown all the while, and there were now at least 38.6 million of us in this small nation. Our Vision 2030 strategists have food for thought.

A major milestone in regional integration was also achieved when EAC’s common market was born, and a vital process of economic and social integration of its peoples and nations began. Kenya, East Africa’s largest economy, has already started reaping the benefits of the expanded market, and we are now free to seek jobs in some regional countries without work permit.

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It was also a year when KACC made good harvest of the political class, a crop of leaders who harvest where they do not sow. It became fashionable to step aside, and the President announced ‘those swindling us would rather die’, as he tried to reinvent his legacy. In fact, we nearly forgot graft existed and almost discovered oil and gas, and set up a nuclear energy commission.

Then came a political crime-buster, sherrif Luis Moreno-Ocampo from Hague on a mission to fight impunity investors in Africa. For the first time in our history, our rulers were scared to the bone for their dear life, and blamed it all on US President Barack Obama whose diplomats rubbed our leaders the wrong way.

But Kenyans loved the historic ‘shock and awe’ assault on the high and mighty.

But Mr Obama could not be safe from his Kenyan roots anyway – in the US, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was categorical that Obama’s ‘racist, anti-colonialist’ world view was shaped by Kenya, a contradiction given WikiLeak’s report of official disdain of our rulers by the Obama Administration. The son of K’ogelo is yet to visit his fatherland despite the positive reform card.

A major barb goes to security agencies for the illegal renditions to Uganda, and failure to nab drug barons. It was not the only export we made though – our grand coalition model for stolen election was also doing well regionally, with Ivory Coast just about to sign up!

But we balanced it with the huge imports from The Hague, and WikiLeaks. Well, it was a memorable year.