President Ruto 4: Controversy and Policy Incoherence

President Ruto’s administration turns four tomorrow, Sunday, September 13.

His performance in this past four years depends on which side of the political divide one sits on. To insiders in the administration, it has been party after party.

To the opposition, he has done nothing in addition to resetting the country backwards in key milestones on rule of law, rights and freedoms and governance systems.

 

However, for ordinary ‘mwananchi’, there are more pain points than there is to celebrate.

This would explain the findings of an opinion poll released this week that finds that 76 per cent of the populace feel the country is heading in the wrong direction and 66 per cent that confirms their personal or household economic situation has worsened.

The culprits for this worsening situation would be strikingly familiar to staunch followers of this column -high taxes, unemployment and high cost of living.

Going back to Professor Hiroyuki Hino’s sentiments weeks ago, ultimately, a government’s performance is measured based on how it either improves or worsens the socio-economic welfare of her people.

From past trends, we do not expect the government to deliver anything this year except for politically motivated programmes/projects that lack continuity and wastes public money.

Own goals

What is inconceivable, however, is how this administration has consistently sustained own goals without any provocation from the people.

Take for instance the controversy about migrant small scale traders in the country and the handling of mining rights at the magandi soda ash.

 

In both instances, public decorum would have dictated that the president refers the matters raised to the relevant government departments for structured dialogue, evidence gathering to inform policy review or direction, and a humane response that protects the rights of target victims and advances our national interests.

Instead, he opted for executive fiats that left everyone spinning in all directions.

 

For example, the question of harassment of migrant workers doing small scale trading activities in the country not only lacks merit in whichever way one may look at it, but also hurts our national interests elsewhere.

First, as the largest economy within the Eastern Africa region, Kenya will as a matter of fact attract migrants looking for basic livelihoods from other economies in the region.

This is the price each large economy has to pay for their success.

The president cannot therefore be boasting about how he has expanded the economy on the one side, and fail to embrace the price that comes with such success. That is why America and Europe have to deal with similar issues domestically.

As the cradle of humankind, Kenya must demonstrate how to handle this things in the most humane way possible.

Second, Kenya embraced the East African Community (EAC) protocol on free labor mobility back in 2010.

Together with Rwanda and Uganda, they allow easy movement of people with simply national identity cards or no visa restrictions.

I have visited both countries within the past five months and queued with citizens at the immigration desks – I was cleared without any questions.

How then, can the big brother turn against her siblings in such an erratic and primitive manner?

If the president had consulted households, he would quickly have learned that his people are literally in every corner of Africa and around the world.

We are a leading export of workers in the hospitality, healthcare, transport, security and even small scale traders. Even in war zones we have Kenyans!

In the Middle East for example, you’ll find Kenyans in open air markets doing small scale trades or hawking, as security guards or domestic workers.

They are truck drivers and herdsmen in America and Europe.

Just this past week, a Kenyan was trending on social media dancing and entertaining Chinese in local joints back in China in their own local lyrics.

This is why Diaspora remittances are the largest forex earner for the domestic economy.

This column has openly opposed the ‘Kazi majuu’ programme for the very reason that it exports our graduates, who are supposed to drive innovation and the creative economy for menial jobs in foreign capitals.

Did the president assume that those foreign capitals where Kenyans are doing local jobs also do not have partisan national interests too?

Third, arguing Kenyans are threatened by migrant workers is a great insult to our bragging rights on our human capital development.

How can Kenyans compete all over the world on merit and by right, yet need protection back at home? Any international organization that uses quota system to allocate employment opportunities will never have any slot open for Kenyans -they would have taken it by right.

If anyone doubts this, they could check at the United Nations Complex in Gigiri, the African Union in Addis Ababa or the EAC headquarters in Arusha.

Migrant traders and workers from the region have become reliable hands in jobs Kenyans no longer want or the ones they’ll do grudgingly because they feel it’s below their skills and competences.

In salons and car washes, migrant workers are reliable and loyal workers for investors in the sector.

In construction sites, contractors seek to control cost of labour due to thin margins because of associated taxes, exploitative labour unions and over skilled local labour force compared to the available jobs.

In any case, these are the ways of capitalism unless we seek to revert the economy back to a communist or socialist economic system.

We have to let the all-knowing invisible hand on the market (forces of demand and supply) to let our economic river rise to its optimal operating level.

Interventions needed

If Kenyans need any protection, it is against the very imports that the traders were complaining about in terms of duty, and outsourcing all infrastructure projects.

This column has advocated for policy interventions that lower input costs, tax subsidies and containment of energy costs to make manufacturing competitive in country.

Further, our engineers and local companies must build our roads, dams, pipelines and electricity networks.

Unchecked imports and ‘Mitumba’ have killed entire value chains in textile, manufacturing, technologies, publishing, arts and the creative economy.

Many enterprises in industrial areas in the country are simply packaging and distribution outfits that abandoned actual manufacturing many years ago due to input and operating costs. Has anyone wondered why supermarkets have their own branded toiletries, rice, milk and sugar?

This is the hard conversation that we must have as a country.

A conversation for the blue-eyed big boys and girls who sit high-up in government offices to stop chasing kickbacks in favour of local industries that create real jobs for our people, pay taxes to the government and crystallize our collective intelligentsia into marketable products and services to the rest of the world.

These roadside disruptive policy declarations on political platforms not only exposes the extremism of the one man show syndrome type of leadership that we have at statehouse, but also resets the country back several decades.

Experts estimate that it takes about 10 to 30 years to rectify the excesses of an overbearing president, depending on how long they stayed in office and the extent of the damage they had caused to public institutions.

We have been home to refugees for decades. Majority of the migrants have been assimilated into our socio-economic fabric -they have become family, friends, parents, boyfriend/girlfriends or comrades in surviving hard economic times. Any policy intervention must bear this in mind!

 

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