Hopefully, Mr Kenyatta will use his hard-fought win prudently, unlike what he did after 2013

President Uhuru Kenyatta (Photo:Courtesy)

There is so much that Mr Kenyatta has set out to do. His task will be much easier if he rallies the country together. As former US President Barack Obama said during his visit to the country in 2015, no team can win with half the players out of the field.

As such, Mr Kenyatta must actively lead in efforts to stabilise the country in the aftermath of the most polarising political season ever. He was wise to reach out to his opponent Raila Odinga; he would be wiser still to move beyond the soundbites.

When he speaks, one feels a sense of exaggerated hope, which wilts in the face of present realities: corruption, unemployment, economic stagnation and tribalism.

The odds could be stacked against him; a slowing economy (economic growth revised downwards to 5.0 per cent) and an unpredictable export market, climate change and political upheaval around the region could work against him, but he has the wherewithal to make a lasting impression.

As a start, the President needs to open up the economy to get those on the fringes into the mainstream if only to promote steady and sustainable growth. By initiating and supporting pro-growth policies, he will have killed two birds with one stone: he will be putting money in people’s pockets and mitigating against the threat posed by the pervasive feeling of exclusion.

He should promote investments with a multiplier effect like the extension of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) to Naivasha and onwards to Kisumu, hastening oil exports and the completion of Kenya Pipeline’s Line 5 Project and building more roads.

His government should be wary of the ballooning public debt, which at 52.6 per cent to real GDP ratio, is an indicator that the economy is not generating wealth fast enough to service debts.

Hopefully, Mr Kenyatta will use his hard-fought win prudently, unlike what he did after 2013. Then, it took him too long to appreciate that half of the country voted against him; instead of building alliances, he went about in a business-as-usual manner packing the top echelons of his government with people from two ethnic communities.

The fight against corruption has been tardy and inadequate. Indeed, corruption feeds off nepotism and the old-boy network. Kenyatta will need to lead the charge against those who squander public money. With corruption denying an estimated 250,000 youths job opportunities every year, it is unacceptable that efforts to fight off the menace have been half-hearted at best. Mr Kenyatta has shown that he is no prisoner of any political grouping. The President needs to deepen the reforms in education, health, public finance management, security and general governance and ensure a free and fair society takes root beyond his tenure. He will need to strengthen social welfare programmes for the youth and the elderly and the vulnerable. These challenges are not formidable, but to sit by and bid time makes them look impossible each day. He might not fix all of them overnight, but he needs to start addressing them.

Mr Kenyatta will also need to carry out political reforms. Parties should serve as vehicles for the emancipation of the masses, not as vehicles for self-glorification and self-aggrandisement. In truth, parties are the bane of our politics.

Our parties have submerged a corrosive culture of tribalism, nepotism and corruption.

Mr Kenyatta will need to lead a national conversation about what kind of society we want to become. Generally, ours is a society ravaged by cynicism and suspicion. He could start by admonishing his political peers for promoting this culture at the expense of virtues like nationalism and patriotism.

He has to show he appreciates the concerns of many that the organs of State have been partisan and, like in the case of the police, been deployed to instill a culture of fear in the population. In another five years, Uhuru Kenyatta will join the ranks of former presidents. We would like to believe that he is driven toward cementing his legacy. And he has time to get things right.

His legislative agenda should be progressive and forward-looking. He must eschew narrow, short-term legislation that only serves to advance a partisan agenda. We hope that Mr Kenyatta will not pick up from where he left off in his first term where his government spent half the time demonising the Opposition and fighting with civil society groups, NGOs and the media, institutions designed to constrain the power of an overzealous Executive.

He needs to reinforce those institutions that underpin our democracy - Parliament, the Judiciary and the Fourth Estate) if only to reassure the masses; the disillusioned masses who feel (rightfully) that democracy has not made their lives any better; those who feel that their voices don’t matter.

For it is evident that our form of democracy has failed to address the complex multi-ethnic composition of our society. But that is not to say it has failed. In spite of all its shortcomings, it remains a better alternative and should be nurtured by whatever means; and in spite of the prediction of doom and gloom, Kenya holds great promise.

Set to retire at 61, it is highly improbable that Mr Kenyatta will relish leaving behind a legacy of the President who could not deliver.