Ruto promises not new, just make the system work

President William Ruto took the occasion of his first national day in charge not to reflect too much on the state’s 60-odd years of independence, but more on the immediate and medium term-challenges it must successfully negotiate to earn the respect and prestige of being the abode of limitless opportunity to those brave enough to take the risk and make their own luck to transform their lives.

On Mashujaa Day, he correctly identified agriculture, shelter (housing) and health as some of the core challenges his government will address in the coming years.

Essentially he was saying that hunger and disease – the two prime exemplars of poverty – continue to haunt Kenyans 60 years after the first government declared war on “poverty, disease and ignorance”.

What he did not say, and we are obliged to remind him is that the immediate past government made the same pledge to pull millions of suffering Kenyans out of poverty that he had the privilege of serving as Deputy President for 10 years.

And the Uhuru/Ruto promise was itself a carryover from every preceding regime.

Every government pegged the pledge on some policy plank and Sessional Papers, often linked to some regional and/or international inspiration.

Medium-term versions

The overriding one nationally is the Vision 2030 and its medium-term versions that remain the fulcrum of Kenya’s development planning since 2008 when President Mwai Kibaki was in power.

Regionally, we have endorsed Africa’s Agenda 2063, while globally we embrace the 2015 UN Sustainable Development Goals under which all UN members committed to achieving by 2030 specific targets in 17 indicators whose existence speaks to the existence of high levels of poverty.

These pledges are often accompanied by very specific implementation plans and commitments to increase levels of investments in key sectors.

Two common examples that our government should be familiar with are the 2001 Abuja Declaration on funding public health in Africa and the more recent 2014 Malabo Declaration on transforming Africa’s agriculture for accelerated growth.

In the former, AU member countries committed to spending 15 per cent of their annual budgets on health; while in the latter, the leaders, again under the aegis of the AU, committed to investing 10 per cent of their annual public expenditure on agriculture.

This could mean that Kenya should, since 2014 at least, have been investing at least 25 per cent of its annual expenditure on agriculture and health.

Like almost all other African countries, it has not and hence the monotony of the pledges presidents keep making, year in, year out.

President Ruto is not the first to promise action and investment to increase land under irrigation or provide affordable housing.

Universal health care has been on the cards for a while now, as have been a bunch of other commitments that he re-promised on Thursday.

What we must ask is what, other than the novelty of his presidency, has changed to persuade Kenyans that his was not just not another national day presidential posturing?

We ask because even if the budgets have fallen far short of what has been promised, billions of shillings have been expended in all the sectors that the President made fresh pledges on.

And the reason the yield has not been commensurate with those investments is simply sloth, indiscipline and corruption in the public service.

The mechanisms contrived for budgeting, resource mobilisation, allocation and project monitoring are largely dysfunctional.

MPs compromised

Parliaments are not executing their approval and oversight roles diligently because legislators are sleeping on the jobs and actively being compromised to sabotage projects.

Otherwise competent and highly qualified bureaucrats are accepting facilitation to manipulate the system to approve projects that are incomplete or divert funds intended for other purposes.

This has contributed to the accumulation of unpaid bills, hundreds of incomplete projects, under-investments in projects that could otherwise stimulate employment, a patchy health infrastructure, etc.

This depressing situation is year-in year-out narrated in excruciating detail in the Auditor-General reports.

It is an area begging for action and we suggest the President start here. End wastefulness, tackle corruption and make public servants work.

The limited resources available are already abnormally stretched with the demands from public debt and recurrent expenditure.

Every effort must, therefore, be made to stretch the returns from every taxpayer’s shilling intended for development.

President Ruto’s promises will remain meaningless declarations unless he whips everyone to make the best out of what is available.

He must start now because as he rewards loyalty and support with appointments to key positions, there are signals that the President is responding more directly to political exigencies than to delivering on the many important electoral promises.

The writer, a former editor-in-chief of the Nation Media Group, is now consulting. [email protected]; @TMshindi