'The Economist' paints a damning assessment of Ruto's performance

“William Ruto is taking Kenya to a dangerous place”, bellows The Economist weekly news magazine in a leader (lead article) last week.  We probably missed it, given the latest uproar over President Ruto’s private church-building agenda for public State House property.  Or maybe owing to real and deepening public anger at the burials of young people dying in the hands of unreformed police.

Though each of these is a genuine subject of debate on its own merits, it is increasingly apparent that this administration, by accident or design, will keep driving us into distraction with more diversions than a new road construction.  It’s tough keeping up with their “spray and pray” diary!

Even before Saba Saba Day on July 7, The Economist offered an alarming lens of growing authoritarianism, repression, brutality and censorship, alongside the erosion of civil liberties and weakening of democratic institutions.  The belief is that Kenya is getting worse, not better.  This bleak external view is not helped at all by a proposed law now in Parliament to control protest rights and freedoms, even as the Executive adjusts the default settings of its negative take on protest from “economic sabotage” to “domestic terrorism” as marching orders for our security agencies.

It isn’t rocket science to see the “zero-sum game” - more protest met by more lethal force.  When the worldview of Kenya’s hitherto regional and continental stability deteriorates so quickly into one driven by a “how-to guide for smothering dissent”, we should truly worry.  Especially since our history teaches us that “immovable objects” eventually succumb to “irresistible forces”.  

The Economist went particularly hard on Ruto himself, suggesting he has reverted to ethnic division after winning 2022 on class division, while observing his indifference to protest voices and advising him to listen better as he changes tack from repression to reform to regain public trust.  

The dramatic conclusion is that he should not stand for re-election in 2027, “as a less tainted successor would have a better chance of getting the reforms Kenya needs” before bemoaning the “lack of a strong opposition candidate, (so without one), he will continue to take the country backwards”.  Ouch!

Once they can free themselves from the happenings of yesterday’s Saba Saba and any aftermath, one fully expects some form of response by the Ruto administration to the article in its entirety. Kenya has a Cabinet and a machinery of government, including its retinue of advisers, for this task.  

Of course, while they might play the usual “sovereignty and independence card”, they must not ignore everyday public concurrence with the article’s broad observations, if not its conclusions. And they can take heart from the fact that The Economist once described Kibaki and his laid-back style as “indolent” at roughly the same time in his first term, while one of their many pieces on Moi in the 1990s memorably described (and depicted) him as “dancing to the donors’ tune”.

Yet the truth is Kenya’s long-standing anger, now accelerated by a regime full of promises, is as much the economy as it is governance, justice, rights and rule of law.  Like accessible public services and an enabling business climate unfettered by thievery and extravagance; like equitable socio-economic openings that build life, community and country in safe, secure and just settings.

Let’s pursue a further angle. For those many anxious for the time when Kenya will enjoy at least four years of stability before electioneering, this administration, like others before, has flopped.  

The opportunity to reshape our political-business cycle towards a first 18-month semester of recovery to turnaround, a second semester of turnaround to transformation and a third to consolidate transformation gains before the six months or so before the next election was missed.  In perspective, today would be the half-term stage of the second semester, when it feels like we are at the half-term stage of the first (month 13, not 34).

Which brings us to the three interrelated issues the Ruto regime faces today - policy credibility, political legitimacy and presidential viability, ranging from “must go” to The Economist’s take.  Let’s briefly examine these issues, as lessons for Ruto (and future others), in reverse sequence.

The fact that we already have announced presidential candidates and formations goes straight to Ruto’s presidential viability question.  Like it or not, this is Kenya’s current state of the nation debate – the emergent idea that the reform or transformation agenda is already laid out (in constitutional terms at least) and the current incumbency is not up to the task. This turns around the point the regime makes, that those who oppose them must show us their plan.   

Put crudely, if the constitution frames the agenda, and BETA specifies it, others could do it better.

If presidential viability is the current issue, then political legitimacy is the one-year-old issue for Ruto.  Lest we forget, this is what Gen-Z was, and continues to be all about – the idea that this administration has perpetuated the greedy, self-serving political model unfit for today’s purpose.  Recent opinion polls suggest that the “broad-based government” is broadly unpopular across Kenya.

This perspective applies across the board, from Members of Parliament to governors, but the presidency is a useful scapegoat for this problem (before we get to the skullduggery involved in transforming Kenya Kwanza’s post-election minority into a parliamentary majority).  

Put simply, “politics without politicians” to “drain the swamp” is Ruto’s political legitimacy test.

Which brings us finally to the core question: the President’s longer-term policy credibility.  

One view might be that, despite a parliamentary majority and broad-based government, Ruto has struggled to build a political/policy constituency that supports his agenda, which is a question of capacity and capability.  The other might be that he was never fully invested in actualising this agenda, which is a question of perverse incentives, including the easy one to replace or displace rather than completely uproot the status quo (the whole point of the “bottom-up” agenda).

Of course, uprooting the status quo goes beyond fighting tenderpreneurs to confronting post-colonial Kenya’s crony capital, including foreign interests and the enclave economy we have built. It is as much about bribery, procurement fraud and budgeted corruption as it is policy capture.

Yet Ruto’s bottom-up agenda deliberately played lip service to corruption, the Fourth Horseman of our economic apocalypse (the first three being their “perfect storm” of global uncertainty, local fiscal stress, and structural local economic imbalance).  Indeed, perception since 2022 has shifted from bottom-up as a laudable policy adventure to top-up as raw, primitive accumulation.

No wonder Gen-Z language increasingly calls for total revolution, and not just “normal” reform!

There are many other perspectives that can be offered on Ruto’s policy credibility. With its debt-service focus since 2022, are we running a Kenyan agenda with IMF input or an IMF one with Kenya’s compliance?  With the abruptly cancelled IMF programme (since we weren’t meeting targets), will we go it alone from now on, or are we still seeking a new program?  Will this new programme still be about debt-sustainability or, as suggested, growth-sustainable? And much more!

Back to the beginning.  If Ruto is taking us to a dangerous place, is he also in an unfamiliar space? Think policy credibility, political legitimacy, and presidential viability. Not just for him, but all in 2027.