Populism trumped reason during Finance Bill deliberations

National Treasury CS John Mbadi during a media engagement on the Finance Bill 2026. [Benard Orwongo, Standard]

The debates preceding the passage of the Finance Bill 2026 in Parliament laid bare a striking thinness of deliberation within Kenya’s legislature. They confirmed what has long been suspected: That much of prevailing sentiment, particularly the anti-government rhetoric, is driven less by coherent reasoning than by a form of post-truth populism in which conviction often outruns analysis.

The Bill was designed to raise Sh120 billion to partially finance a Sh4.82 trillion budget for the coming fiscal year. Yet the debate that followed revealed a familiar blend of confusion and theatre.

One legislator, speaking with apparent authority, cited clause 159, despite the Bill containing only 157 clauses.

Another warned that the second-hand clothing trade, widely known as Mitumba, would face punitive new taxes to the detriment of low-income households reliant on it. When the facts were later clarified, it emerged that no new taxes were, in fact, proposed on Mitumba.

A measure of sophistry was also on display. One legislator urged a reduction in public spending, notwithstanding the widely held assessment that the budget is already tightly constrained, with minimal fiscal space.

In practice, any meaningful cut would require large-scale retrenchment across the civil service, an option few politicians are willing to contemplate in the run-up to elections. Instead, the suggestion stopped at a more palatable target: Curbing presidential expenditure.

Yet even this gesture overlooked a more uncomfortable arithmetic. The savings would be marginal while the diplomatic and strategic costs, given the presidency’s central role in Kenya’s external economic engagement, would be far from negligible.

186 members

Yet it was the final vote that descended into a farce. At the third reading, the last stage of the legislative process before a Bill is transmitted to the President for assent, a staggering 186 members of the 349-seat House failed to participate. Only 122 MPs voted in favour while 40 opposed the measure.

That elected representatives should absent themselves from one of Parliament’s most consequential votes is difficult to defend. Lawmaking is the legislature’s core function. In many democracies, such a dereliction of duty would provoke a fierce backlash from constituents and invite serious questions about an MP’s fitness for office.

The scale of the abstentions suggests that considerations other than the merits of the legislation were at play. Rather than reflecting a principled assessment of the Bill, the voting patterns appeared heavily shaped by partisan calculations with opposition to the government often taking precedence over the substance of the measure itself. 

The composition of the dissenting vote also revealed a striking ethnic dimension, lending credence to the view that political expediency and populist sentiment, rather than policy considerations, were the principal drivers of the outcome.

On a brighter note, Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi has initiated a phased rollout of the Treasury Single account (TSA) system to tighten control over public funds.

The framework which centralises government revenues and expenditure into a single pool at the Central Bank of Kenya, aims to improve cash visibility and reduce borrowing costs significantly. TSA is a welcome addition to corruption-mitigation efforts.

Other reforms include electronic government procurement, zero-based budgeting and accrual accounting, all set to be operational in the coming fiscal year as part of broader governance reforms agenda in Kenya.

Mr Khafafa is a public policy analyst