Who will repay IMF when we all die from taxation?

imf loan

IMF said the loan would help Kenya tackle Covid-19 in the short run and balance its books in the long run. 

Photo credit: AFP

It’s been long since Kenyans started crying out against the government’s appetite for loans. This week, Kenyans came out in large numbers and camped on the social media pages of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), asking them to come out with handkerchiefs and dry our tears.

They made it known to the IMF that this was a painful decision that did not come easily. When your country has been admitted to critical financial care, you have to do everything you can to remind the doctor on call to keep count of the number of bags of blood and electrolyte fluids, cannula, and needles the patient is using. Because this patient has a history of sneaking in unknown persons to pinch bags of blood and sell to Somalia, and hawk needles on River Road at evening prices.

We took this drastic decision to keep watch at the IMF because legislators in charge of monitoring the dying patient have been blackmailing the President for car grants, while those supposed to change the tubes will wake up in 2022 and promise to build a bridge where there is no river.

Economic recovery plan

Since the turn of the decade, economists have been warning us of the need to check our financial cardiac monitor, but those in charge of prescribing a sound economic recovery plan instead went to the market for more loans but the cash never found its way home, or was diverted to projects that were neither urgent nor necessary.

The worst we have always feared is now coming to pass. Our economic vitals are getting deranged, our heartbeat is getting irregular and the cardiac monitor is louder than a whistle inside an empty stadium.

We are camping at IMF’s online offices with a rechargeable loudspeaker, not because we want the patient inside to die, but because if the patient dies we will have no home to go back to; and we aren’t kicking refugees back to their countries because we also want to be homeless.

We would like to clarify to the IMF that we aren’t camping at their “hospital” because we hate them. At Independence, our founding leaders were crystal clear that our enemies were ignorance, disease and poverty – and the last time we checked, the ‘I’ in the IMF did not stand for Ignorance.

Whoever is lying to the IMF that Kenyans hate money is an enemy of Kenyans. Let it be known to the Fund that Kenyans love foreign money, especially if it comes with an opportunity to take a selfie at a foreign exchange bureau with an Instagram caption warning our haters to keep catching feelings as we catch dollar bills.

Public funds

However, we’ve heard that some bad things are going to happen to ordinary Kenyans because the IMF is giving our government money, and this is what is giving us the heebie jeebies. If our breadwinners are going to be retrenched to meet the conditions for the loan, then it is only fair that the government come out and explain to us why we have to be crucified for the sake of those who have been mismanaging our public funds, because Jesus already died for our sins.

We are asking that if the IMF is going to give our government more loans, we should be allowed to stop the government on the highway and ask them to open the car boot to see if they aren’t transporting the money to a freshly dug grave.

If we are going to buy car fuel at the price of human blood because the IMF gave us cash we didn’t smell, then we should at least be allowed to wave placards at their offices and ask them who will repay the money when we are all dead by taxation.