Politics of deals over delivery lets government fudge progress reports

Do you get the frightening feeling that we are unable to move forward with honesty and clarity? Take the ODM-UDA 10-point agenda. 

One side loudly claims we’re at 85 per cent performance, and this is the basis on which a more permanent ODM-UDA marriage will be consummated in 2027. 

Another side, populated by ODM stalwarts, tells us we’re at 10 per cent performance. And it was far easier to access the findings of the 10 per cent report than it was for the 85 per cent one. Welcome to Kenya’s twilight zone. It is easy to suspect that the people are closer to the latter report than they are to the former. 

Because, when we strip away the NSE bells and car sun-roof dog whistling, this administration isn’t that different. There is an inbuilt dishonesty in Kenya’s leadership that needs a prayerful cleansing ceremony. 

Take the 10-point agenda itself. In reality, it’s now as dead as a dodo, apparent extension notwithstanding. Last week’s reporting failed two tests. First, a monitoring and evaluation-style assessment against reasonably objective milestones, even key performance indicators (KPIs). 

As in, KPIs for an agenda that demanded honest, progressive action, then reporting, on extraordinary efforts undertaken, not our business-as-usual bureaucratic blunderbuss. Wasn’t that the entire Gen Z point? To go and be different? 

Second, the single thread that runs through our post-election deals is we simply refuse to implement the Constitution not just as a persuasive legal command (which it is), but as an imaginative policy advisory.

Think of Chapters 1 to 7 as the demand side of our social contract, and the rest as the institutional supply side, with Chapters 8 to 11 sorting our politics, while Chapters 12 to 15 are guides for the technocracy.  

In pre-Gen Z Kenya, political settlements settled the people. In Gen Z Kenya, the people’s settlement — as stated in the Constitution — defines the political settlement.  That’s the “bottom-up” agenda we miss. 

Thankfully, it’s only 511 days to our August 2027 election, 1.316 noisy days since the last one.  Going by the three-phase strategy of 18-month efforts canvassed before, this month should be a third of the way into our economic transformation (think, September 2022 to March 2024 as phase 1 economic recovery, March 2024 to September 2025 as phase 2 economic turnaround, September 2025 to March 2027 as phase 3 economic transformation with five months left for election campaigns).  Where are we today? 

It would be difficult to tell, observing this administration’s battering-ram approach to getting stuff done.  You only need to read Parliament’s public participation reports to see that it’s all perfunctory, box-ticking.  

The Budget Policy Statement was passed with little to no thought about the “Singapore agenda”.  The National Infrastructure Fund (NIF) was passed by MPs from areas unlikely to be on the short list of “bankable projects”.  There are two unspoken angles to NIF. 

First, the gazillions of lucre in tenders.  This is after all, a tenderpreneurial, not entrepreneurial, government. Second, that the reason why these are bankable projects is we will end up paying for their use when completed, through fees, levies and other charges.  That’s how the investors in these roads, power or irrigation projects get their money back, right? 

It would be a huge surprise if the first Supplementary Budget Estimates are not passed willy nilly, despite, yet again, calls for public participation with most of the extra money requested already having been spent. That Sh4 billion budget for public participation might be better spent forestalling our next labour strike. 

Of course, we are more British than the Brits, so procedural form always outbalances actual substance. 

And, contrary to earlier belief, it isn’t that policy adventure is battling primitive accumulation, but policy adventure is today aided and abetted by primitive accumulation. Before one captures the state, you must first capture policy, right? As said before, at the back end of every one of this administration’s grandiose schemes is a grandiloquent cabal.  The nature of our corruption in high places abhors the vacuum between one regime and the next.  Then again, this is what happens when we vote in dealers, not vote for leaders. 

So, on this pessimistic morning, what does the state of our economic nation going into 2027 look like? 

Well, first, we all know our fiscus is all over the place; revenues falling short of target; spending overshooting budgets; ultimately, the mad situation where income is chasing expenditure, not vice versa.  And we don’t need the IMF to tell us our public sector balance sheet is in bad shape.  Deteriorated badly by the previous regime, it hasn’t improved much under a current one given to off-balance sheet trickery. 

The NIF is an effective admission that we can’t balance our books normally, so we need to act abnormally.  Do you see anything in our forward fiscal forecasts that suggests a rebalancing of our spending priorities — especially towards the social sector (education, health, social protection) — as a result of this new fund?  Or will all of this apparently freed-up cash go into our highly opaque security, but we aren’t saying it yet? 

Except that there is no freed-up cash, otherwise we would use it to pay down our debt that keeps rising. 

That’s just the fiscus, the government tail that we want to wag the economic dog with. Transforming an economy isn’t a one-day, or one-year task, but do we see anything close to a budding economic transformation in these parts? Built up from counties — to go fast — and led by national — to go far.  

Does our $32 billion Nairobi economy look like its heading to $50-60 billion soon? What about the $32 billion “West of Nakuru” economy and its own $70-80 billion potential? Or the $28 billion “Mount Kenya” economy, which includes three of Kenya’s “Big Five” economies (Kiambu, Nakuru, Meru) — the two others being Nairobi and Mombasa — which should already be at $60 billion?  And the rest of Kenya, what I call the “Beltway” — from Narok and Kajiado through Lower Eastern and the Coast to Mandera and Wajir — currently a low priority US$24 billion economy that should be at least triple that. 

You will not get honest or clear answers to these questions, even as you endure “development tours”. Maybe, on this pessimistic morning, the question for 2027 is about what we want to look like in 2032.