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Ruto scorecard: It's a mixed bag for President in seven months

President William Ruto during the thanksgiving for Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu, Nyaribari Masaba, Kisii County. [PCS]

Public funds

The constitutionality of the position has been questioned, just as the legality of Musalia Mudavadi's Prime Cabinet Secretary post and the recent office of the spouse of the Prime Cabinet Secretary, which Mudavadi has said would not be run using public funds. But the President has faced the heat mostly for his apparent U-turn in his previous stand against "creating positions."

Ruto's campaign was as much popularising his agenda as it was chiding his rivals, who consistently provided fodder for his never-ending criticism. His predecessor Uhuru Kenyatta was in charge when the country's economy faltered and when many Kenyans struggled to feed themselves.

On the campaign trail, Ruto would tell the masses that Uhuru was squarely to blame for the economic downturn and the resultant runaway cost of living. He would also say that Raila shouldered equal blame courtesy of the March 2018 handshake with Uhuru.

Ruto dismissed his predecessor's explanation that Kenya's economy was hurt by the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war, rationalisations the President has recently adopted in explaining the country's financial woes.

And he seems to be giving back to the Opposition, which has witnessed a high supply of issues with which it could attack the administration.

"These blunders will come to bite him," said university lecturer Prof Gitile Naituli. "People are wired to see mistakes, meaning that even if Ruto does anything positive going forward, they will not see it." Amid the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) constitutional amendment push, President Ruto would accuse Uhuru and Raila of only seeking to "create positions" for themselves and their allies.

A year after the Supreme Court quashed the BBI, Ruto has populated his bloated administration with allies, most of whom lost in last year's elections. He has also earned criticism for slighting the "mama mboga" and "boda boda riders", on whose backs he rode his campaign, by failing to appoint a single one to his Executive.

Plum jobs

"You said you would give opportunities to the mama mboga. Where is she among the CASs recently nominated? Hustlers were deceived," Likoni MP Mishi Mboko said on Tuesday.

"What do you tell mama mboga now since you had already promised that the government would be theirs?" Prof Naituli posed, arguing that Ruto has failed to understand that he is under more public scrutiny now that he is President.

"Ruto is a very good campaigner but a bad manager... a day after CASs are appointed, we are told that the Salaries and Remuneration Commission has increased their salaries."

Ruto has also been faulted for making appointments that do not meet regional balance and, equally critical, turning back on his promise to allocate 50 per cent of his Cabinet to women. He appointed seven women to his Cabinet, falling short of the constitutional two-thirds principle.

The President also failed to meet the gender rule in the appointment of Principal Secretaries (12 out of 51 are women) and CASs (13 out of 50 are women). This, essentially, discredits his push to have more women nominated in Parliament through constitutional amendments.

On the flip side, the President has also honoured some of the pledges. For instance, he appointed the six judges Uhuru had rejected. Ruto has also rolled out his Hustler Fund programme, even though the lending facility has not been interest-free, as he had promised it would be.

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