What Ruto team should do to win goodwill from suffering Kenyans

President William Ruto. [Denish Ochieng, Standard]

The dramatic exit of Liz Truss from 10 Downing Street after a mere six weeks, and the almost predictable drubbing of the Democrats in the upcoming American mid-term elections may look distant and irrelevant to us.

Casual observers will however know they contain a huge message to the Kenya Kwanza administration, now largely in place with the swearing-in of the Cabinet. The message is that voters everywhere are feeling the weight of the economy and are punishing their leaders even where the leadership is innocent of the blame for the economic woes.

In America, the Democrats administration, despite Biden's lackluster performance is not the cause of the downturn in the economy. In the UK, the economy is headed to recession. The causes of the recession have little to do with Boris Johnson or Liz Truss.

Many results from the disastrous decision to "Brexit" in 2017, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the global economy and the high energy costs pushed by the Ukrainian war. But voters are not interested in causal explanations; they want results.

What message does this send to President William Ruto's team? Firstly, there will be no honeymoon. People want results, and they want them now.

They want to see lower food prices. They want better healthcare. Businesspeople expect better returns and a more friendly tax environment.

Even 100 days is too long for a battered Kenyan. The other reality that needs to sink quickly for Kenya Kwanza is that the citizens do not care for blame games. There is no doubt that many of our economic ailments came from the just-exited Jubilee administration. The runaway borrowing that has swallowed most of our revenue and left little wiggle room for the government to spend on critical sectors, lies squarely on the Uhuru government.

The large volume of pending bills that has impoverished many businesspeople, especially at the counties, can be traced to Treasury's refusal to disburse exchequer to government departments and counties.

But while these stories were important in the campaign, they are now irrelevant. Kenyans have given Kenya Kwanza a job, postmortems belong to history books. The final reality that Kenya Kwanza needs to internalise is that government largesse in a time of want must be curtailed. If there was anything that Boris Johnson's "PartyGate" exit taught us, it is that there is no room for "displays of splendor" in tough economic times. The Gikuyu have a saying that when you are full, you must cover your stomach.

Leadership must try and relate to the suffering of the majority. Fortunately, many in the Kenya Kwanza team have come from below grass. They must show they relate to where most people are. If they cannot, they must at least keep it off our faces.

I recall one of the most frustrating experiences in the previous administration; the callousness of political honchos as they pushed us off the roads with their long convoys of fuel guzzlers. Finally, Kenya Kwanza must learn to communicate truth to people. Many citizens appreciated the candor with which President Ruto explained our economic realities, what was possible in the short and medium terms, and what was not possible.

Regular communication that says people have not been forgotten will be critical. Kenyans may be frustrated but they are not dumb. They know that the ill-advised subsidies on fuel and Unga were mere painkillers. They were not treating cancer but letting it sprout under the surface.

They recognise that high fuel costs will continue to push consumer prices up and that government will continue to expand the tax base to meet our expenditure needs, especially the loans which we are now bound to pay. But if they can see a changed approach that for instance reduces government waste and mismanagement, they will wait.

If they can see the application of savings from waste and mismanagement go into payment of pending bills, especially in the counties, there will be some hope. If they see a definite, positive, well-thought movement towards the delivery of the promises that made them prefer Kenya Kwanza, they will give time to the government to deliver on these promises.