50 per cent plus 1 pipedream: Why the President should be a worried man

 President William Ruto . [File, Standard]

The ended week knocked the wind out of your lungs.  At the centre was the French President’s visit, fully-loaded with probable altruistic promises and vivid drama. Then there were the TIFA polls and their ominous outlook for the establishment. 

Fuel cost hikes came in to cast a dark cloud on the future of a regime wrestling with unfulfilled promises, doubtable truths, and a population that is getting restless about everything government.

The Rigathi Gachagua impeachment petition brought shocking entertainment, with evidence whose merits are best left to the court.  

Separately, Parliament vetted an ambassadorial square peg in a round hole, inviting the public to wonder about the basis for State appointments. What does the appointing authority look for? 

And there were the usual funeral and burial sagas. A widow’s rare candour shocked mourners. Emily Obwaka’s traumatic disclosures placed the Dr Job Obwaka passing at the doorstep of State House.

Nairobi Hospital

Emily spoke of greed in high places, and of threats against the late doctor’s life, if he would not withdraw a court case related to high stakes interests in Nairobi Hospital. Her punchline was a rhetorical question that should disturb the conscience of a regime that appears morally shipwrecked, “How rich do you want to get?” 

Indications are that President William Ruto is doing very well and terribly, at the self-same time. The French President’s visit, the TIFA polls, and a by-election in Emrua Dikirr stole the week. The fuel price hikes crowned a season informed by a comedy of errors.

Emrua Dikirr and TIFA should, however, warm the hearts of the political establishment. Yet, the two should also worry them.

French President Emmanuel Macron was a good optic, bringing with him, as he did, some of the usual foreign promises and covenants.  The taste of the deals will, however,  be in the eating of the promised pie.

Every government needs high-level state visits. They give authority to the image of the incumbent, especially when the visitor is the President of a major Western nation. The true benefits can, however, only be measured in the long term. 

Despite Macron’s waning popularity back home, and despite the fact that French media was less excited about their President’s whereabouts than Kenyans were, the visit upped Ruto’s standing in the lenses of diplomatic activity and international legitimacy. It also gave the optic that Kenya was still central to strategic global partnerships, and even crucial in foreign investment. 

But even in Nairobi the Macron visit, also starring representatives of 30 or more African states, was a good show for Ruto.

It gave the impression of respectability. It told Kenyans that their President is valued out there. A senator from the Rift Valley wondered, at some public gathering in the Rift, why “some Kenyans cannot see what these foreigners are seeing in the performance of this government.”

And that, exactly, is the problem. Public dramas couched in foreign optics do not automatically translate into local political achievement by the State, or comfort for the citizens.

The TIFA polls brought up the dirt in the optics of the Ruto popularity wash.

The Kenyan incumbent would poll 24 per cent of the vote, if elections were to be held today. Yes, the President is ahead of the pack. But, shouldn’t the incumbent always be ahead? Yet, it remains significant how far ahead; and whether he would be an outright winner.

Next year

Twenty-four percent should worry Ruto. Kenyans could actually send him home next year, if he does not watch out. This is regardless of whether he faces a single opposition candidate, or a united opposition.

The magic figure of 50 per cent plus one vote is increasingly tricky for Kenya’s Number One. Polls signal public dissatisfaction over cost of living pressures, taxation, youth unemployment, unmet promises and expectations, and sundry frustrations that are attributable to the Ruto state. 

Emurua Dikirr, for its part, has been seen as a test for what to expect in next year’s elections.

Ruto’s United Democratic Alliance (UDA) once again took the seat. On the face of it, this is a great showing. The tricky part, however, is that by-elections are hugely dependent on cocktails of local concerns, such as clan loyalties and dynamics, candidate quality, and voter turnout. 

Presidential poll

The role of national factors in Emurua Dikirr is not exactly measurable. It is difficult to tell if, whatever they may be, they will remain 14 months from now. Yet, it should still worry UDA that the DCP candidate polled about 10,000 votes, against UDA’s 18,000, in what is a UDA political garrison. What this could permutate into at the General Election, and its implications for the presidential poll especially, could be critical. 

The emerging picture is one of a President who is strong in management and use of State machinery. Yet, he is also strained by household economics, tax fatigue, and fuel costs.

The three, rolled into one, in turn begin fuelling public impatience with the regime. External pressures generated by volatile global oil markets suggest that Ruto faces a serious time constraint, ahead of the general elections. 

Already, the behaviour around fuel prices, put together with splashing of money and public displays of opulent living, is making Ruto’s institutional strength to look like elite insulation from public pain. The President looks politically in control. Yet, very significantly, the social and economic foundations of that control are under huge pressure. It does not help matters that there exist suspicions about cartel activities in the economy.

From Ferdinand Marcos’ Philippines and Duvalier’s Haiti in the 1980s, to Africa’s Arab Spring in the first decade of the 2000’s, society demonstrates that governments can survive criticism and opposition attacks; but that does not last forever.

Governments may survive noisy scandals and outlive their failed promises for a while. Eventually, however, they must absorb broad-based economic displeasure and fatigue, or prepare to face the music. 

TIFA’s latest poll shows that the Ruto government is on a cliff hanger. Ever growing numbers of households feel that life is becoming more expensive. They do not believe that their taxes are being spent well. They find the government unpredictable, even as the only thing that seems to be certain is that Kenya is going in the wrong direction. 

Economic grievances of this kind can be sticky.

In 2023, Ruto assured Kenyans that things would improve and stabilise by the end of 2025.

He explained himself that he was paying the sovereign debt. Two years was all he needed to pay off all debts.

From the start of 2026, he said, Kenya would be another Namibia or Botswana, owing not a coin to anybody. Taxation would go down, and with it the cost of living.

“We do everything using our own money,” Ruto promised, repeatedly. 

Tragically, this has not happened, and it is not about to. Known official show that President Ruto’s government has instead borrowed at least Sh3 trillion since the day he promised to end all state borrowing

Where Kenya was supposed to be at zero date, according to the 2023 official pledges, public debt has escalated from 11.8 trillion to 12.25 trillion. 

Current regime

Clearly, the debt saga is not going to be solved by Kenya’s current regime. Nor will taxes drop anytime soon

Underlying the challenge in the fuel cost crisis is, in fact, a hidden state revenue factor. The higher the fuel cost, the more tax the State collects on petroleum products, as well as on excise duty, on almost everything. For, the cost of everything escalates, as a factor of the rise in the price of oil, and especially that of diesel. 

Diesel drives everything, from bus fare, bulk deliveries, the cost of electricity, all the way to the cost of the vegetables on your table.  The State hoodwinks the nation when it announces that the cost of kerosene has not increased, while that of petrol has “only increased slightly, but diesel has increased significantly.” 

Diesel transports all the food you buy; be it farm produce, or processed food from the factory. The additional cost will come to you. In building and construction, in hospitals, in school; in all sectors, the impact is immediate.

Now these are the things that the Ruto government must reckon with as it gets set for the homestretch, in its now four years of election campaigns.

It must also reckon with the fact that much of its borrowing has been from the domestic market.

Domestic borrowing

Two considerations are significant here. First, is that domestic borrowing by the State edges out both the private sector and the citizen. It squeezes them deep into dire straits.

The second factor is that there does not appear to be prudent spending of money so borrowed. The huge stacks of money that the state establishment carries around to dish out (now under NYOTA empowerment, then in church, and even just as gifts to the public) speak to irresponsible spending of borrowed money. State insiders speak of a phone call to the National Treasury as the only thing a high powered individual needs to make, and hundreds of millions will materialise in cartons, often in US dollars.  A conscientious government that is focused on redeeming both the economy and itself does not spend money that way, least of all borrowed money. Accordingly, the Ruto government begins finding itself at the dismal 30 per cent popularity rating, down from 44 percent six months ago. 

The Edwin Sifuna-led Linda Mwananchi ODM faction stands at 73 per cent popularity, against Oburu Oginga’s State supported Linda Ground strand at below 30 percent. Sifuna, who has not publicly expressed interest in running for president, stands at 14 per cent. The pain that Sifuna talks of at his public rallies cuts across regional loyalties. Incumbency and State visibility is not helping to reduce the hunger pangs at the household. 

The cure does not reside in more promises and more relaunching of the same projects that have been launched so many times.

The least the regime could do is to demonstrate change of its know-it-all attitude, and dismissive derision towards all critical and even corrective messaging from elsewhere. 

Dr Muluka is a strategic communication adviser

The vulnerability of the regime begins filtering through when a Cabinet Secretary says in Western Kenya that it is now very difficult to canvass for votes for William Ruto. A frustrated cooperatives and SMEs CS, Wycliffe Oparanya, told a public gathering that nobody in the region seems to want to hear about Ruto’s pleas for a second term. 

Lurambi MP, Bishop Titus Khamala, echoed Oparanya’s words a few days later. He said the challenge comes from unfulfilled promises. The same roads have been launched and relaunched so many times, the bishop lamented. People see road construction materials on site, then soon after the president has left, the stuff is ferried away, only to be returned at the next launch. Or, it is taken elsewhere for yet another launch. Khamala wondered aloud how anyone would expect to convince voters to support such a presidential candidate next year.

Despite the sheen of basking in international glory, and despite leading in opinion polls, and in by-elections, the sun could be setting on the Ruto empire. When a minister wonders in public about how he will get his boss re-elected, he is not suggesting that he will quit the political arrangement in which he is. He is, in fact, saying that he has already begun the process of leaving. Even if it is not cooked, the Ruto 2027 goose is cooking towards a well-done steak. 

Dr Muluka is a strategic communication adviser