I think I can safely say that most Kenyans will run for cover when they look at the Jubilee Manifesto and see that they are being offered more of what Jubilee has been up to these past five years! Believe it or not, the title of their Manifesto is Continuing Kenya’s Transformation.
I know that even diehard Jubilee supporters are deeply aggrieved by the Jubilee record, ravaged as even they have been by grossest and most public corruption in the history of our country.
Therefore, continuing the Jubilee transformation means it’s going to be another race to the bottom! In choosing that title, Jubilee and President Uhuru Kenyatta have confirmed once again how much out of touch they are with the needs of ordinary Kenyans.
Corruption is unfortunately not new in our country. What is new is its breathless and unbounding scope. That is what has made Kenyans finally realize that corruption is at the heart of their acute deprivations. Kenyans know that their major afflictions are not due to acts of nature!
But the worst of Jubilee’s many disastrous policies centers on exclusion. Jubilee had decided on a nakedly ethnic strategy for securing power in the 2013 election, pitting two of our communities against the rest. What is astonishing is that Jubilee continued with policy after the election, as if if Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto were unaware that there would be an electoral reckoning five years hence! That t is why we have seen may leaders who deserted the opposition to join the government.
The Manifesto also tells us what Jubilee will do in the next five years if they win. But Kenyans cannot be fooled by such promises! When there is an incumbent government, everyone knows that its re-election will be determined by its record while in power. Jubilee’s record of failure on virtually every front is in fact the easiest indictment of their manifesto! All their promises in their new manifesto end up highlighting what they failed in delivering from their last one.
What we all know is that our people’s lives, and businesses, have been degraded in the last five years. At least 70 per cent of Kenyans have indicated in polls that the country is headed in the wrong direction, which is the highest percentage ever recorded in our country. And which means that many Jubilee supporters are also deeply aggrieved by the grotesque plunder of our resources. Look at:
- the price of Unga;
- the steep inflation that has put most essentials out of reach for millions; the deepening ethnic divide that is challenging our nationhood;
- many more of our youth who are jobless;
- And the dispossession many communities are experiencing – all are intimately connected to corrupt leaders who are grabbing everything that they can lay their hands on.
Every sector is retrenching, from telecoms to banking to insurance.
Ethnic clashes and urban crime are taking the lives of ever more Kenyans and impeding the capacity of communities and neighbourhoods to realise their development potential.
Neither has the government implemented any strategy to address the biting housing crisis in the country.
Regionally, Kenya was once the envy of all our neighbours. But Ethiopia overtook us last month as the region’s top economy.
Tanzania, once so far behind us, is poised to overtake us is economic output any day now.
Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania are also pulling out from energy and infrastructure projects that they previously committed to partnering with our country. Our SGR no longer going to Uganda and Rwanda.