All indications are the Finance Bill 2023 will become law. The process leading to passage of the Bill revealed two important details about our new emerging politics of public policy.
First, it showed Kenyans are increasingly adept at discussing complicated policy issues. While the discussion mostly focused on the proposed housing levy, Kenyans also discussed the Finance Bill's implications on manufacturing, small and medium businesses, and costs of tax administration. This is progress.
Second, the process showed there is still a yawning gap between the discourse in the media and politicians' responsiveness. Despite all the huff and puff, the vote in Parliament for the Bill was not even close.
The obvious explanation for the overwhelming support for the Finance Bill in Parliament despite the vociferously critical debate preceding the vote is that the Kenyan commentariat is but a tiny sliver of the population.
For example, the vast majority of Kenyans are not wage earners and so will be impacted by the proposed payroll taxes. In this regard, most legislators supported the Bill knowing their constituents - many of them farmers, small business owners, and the (under)unemployed - would not be directly negatively impacted by its contents.
A less obvious explanation is that the passage of the Bill reveals the disconnect between our commentariat in Nairobi and other urban areas and "regular" Kenyans.
As noted above, opposition to the Bill was motivated by more than just rejection of the proposed payroll taxes. Smart analysts noted likely negative impacts on both the macro economy and specific non-wage sectors.
Yet those points fell on deaf ears - at least if we are to go by the actions of legislators. Why did the apparent negative sentiments over the Bill among Kenyans not sway their representatives? One explanation is that the negative sentiments revealed in the media did not reflect reality on the "ground" and legislators had a better sense of the latter compared to TV producers who cared more about viewership of "debates."
Another explanation is that the legislators who supported the Bill wrongly thought that their constituents would support it. The tragedy, of course, is that the lack of credible public polling on the Bill means we cannot parse between these two potential explanations.
A credible poll might have served the role of generating common knowledge about where Kenyans stand; and made it harder for their representatives to ignore public opinion (either way).
The writer is an Associated Professor at Georgetown University
