Security budget balloons while justice starves and protesters bleed

National Treasury CS John Mbadi carrying the budget at Parliament on June 12, 2025. [Boniface Okendo, Standard]

For probably the first time in Kenya’s post-independence history, the annual budget address – which today we call the Budget Statement presented by our Treasury Cabinet Secretary in Parliament – wasn’t the headline across pretty much all of our leading popular dailies.  The one exception ignored the address but described the budget as a “begging spree”.  Remember when Minister and briefcase would adorn every paper’s front page, with neat graphics about “winners and losers”?

Think about it.  In which country claiming to be at peace, not war, isn’t the budget headline news?  The harsh reality, as epitomised by last Thursday’s “No Justice, No Budget” public protests in support of murdered Albert Ojwang as the Budget Statement was read, is that Kenya is at war.