Why voters might make Ruto one-term president

 

President William Ruto arrives for the State of the Nation address at Parliament on November 21, 2024. [Boniface Okendo, Standard]

The historical comeback of US President-Elect Donald Trump has all the signs of a new dawn for Americans. Trump resoundingly defeated US Vice President Kamala Harris and is set for inauguration in January. Trump has promised Americans a golden age era. Cambridge Dictionary defines the golden age as a period of time, sometimes imaginary, when everyone was happy, or a particular art or business was successful.

Building upon the campaign motto 'Make America Great Again', Trump now wants to 'Make America Healthy Again'. Under this theme, Trump’s Health Secretary appointee Robert F Kennedy has vowed to combat the epidemic of chronic diseases which he described as an existential threat to America’s future perpetuated by big pharma and big food.

Already Trump has completed the formation of his Cabinet. Even interestingly, Trump has tapped the experiences of successful businessmen Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency. Trump believes that this new department will dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies. Musk has assured Americans that his department will save taxpayers up to 2 trillion dollars from a 7 trillion-dollar budget.

Unfortunately for Kenyan hustlers, two years after the elections, they have become victims of their own creation. Not only have they been forgotten but they are now being milled to bits. Campaign pledges mutated into promises, overpromises and now blatant lies and repeated lies.

Civil servants have surrendered 57.25 per cent of their pay slip to the following statutory deductions: PAYE 35 per cent, Housing 1.5 per cent, SHIF 2.75 per cent, Pension 12 per cent and NSSF 6 per cent. And just the other day, Belgut MP Nelson Koech, made the following statement “On the feeling that the government is overtaxing Kenyans, those of us who are privileged to be employed must carry the rest of the nation with us. It sounds punitive but then the question should be, where will the government generate revenue from?”

This statement should not be taken lightly as Koech is a close ally of the President and chairs a powerful committee in Parliament. The statement, in pure political language, is the position of the government’s taxation policy. Put simply, the government is short of ideas on how to grow revenue and the economy and will tax its way to the next elections and beyond in order to implement its ‘plans’.

Whereas Trump is hoping to make America healthy again, Kenyans have been condemned to poor health services. The introduction of Universal Health Care through the Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF) is a disaster. A keen observer will note that the government is spending more money on advertisements to sell SHIF than actualising the programme.

Education is also in a shambles. The CBC rollout and the university funding are hard nuts to crack. In addition, we have record-high unemployment rates among the young people and hustlers continue to face harsh economic realities. The person they entrusted to steer them to happiness and a life of lesser pain has found out that bottom-up economics was not as simple as it sounded.

The ongoing exchanges with the Church don’t help Ruto either. The Church is calling out Ruto over failed promises. It must be noted that priests and bishops relate with Kenyans at a personal level and have a better understanding of their suffering.

It's unlikely that Ruto will deliver. Even worse the bottom-up economics was simply another bad lie to win an election. Having been found out on his lies, Ruto is staring at a certain one-term presidency. Kenyans voted for Ruto because they believed that their lives would be better off with him. As Americans voted to re-elect Trump because they had become poorer under the Biden-Harris regime, Kenyans will likely condemn Ruto to a single-term presidency over the failed promises.

And to answer Mr Koech who seems to have thrown in the towel, perhaps the next government will have better ideas at generating more revenue instead of overburdening already burdened hustlers.