OMWENGA: President Ruto’s opportunity to shine fading fast

It is now more than a year later and if Kenyans were to be asked a question Ronald Reagan famously asked Jimmy Carter in 1980: are you better off today than you were a year ago, a vast majority of Kenyans would answer in the negative. This is because the cost of living, which was bad when Ruto took over, is now worse.

So is everything else in every measure of economic development with no relief in sight.

That is the diagnosis, but what is the solution?

The solution has been there all along, but the President has missed opportunities to implement those solutions and is now on the verge of losing every one of them to the country’s detriment and dimming his prospect for reelection in 2027.

First, Ruto has had an opportunity to seriously fight and have an impact against corruption and impunity. He has done none of that. Unlike his predecessor who at one time publicly declared there was nothing he could do about corruption and impunity, Ruto just decided to appoint at least two members of his cabinet accused of corruption and impunity.

In other words, Ruto lost the fight against corruption before he started it and this is a failure that continues and will continue to be a contributing factor in digging us deeper into more economic misery.

Though time is running out, Ruto must act now and at least haul to court known thieves and recover billions stolen by these characters roaming the streets freely and enjoying their loot while the public from whom they have stolen suffers.

The President must start from the mother of all corruption and the elephant in the room and that is, the hundreds of billions the country has borrowed and must repay but there is no known public good that money was put into use.

The time to account for that stolen money which we are all saddled with repayment when we got not a cent in benefit is now.

Second, Ruto had the opportunity to reduce the serious problem of bloated government, but a good case can be made that he has made the problem worse. For example, Ruto increased the number of Cabinet Administrative Secretaries from 29 to 50.

Not only are these appointments unconstitutional as the court recently declared, but the positions are also mostly filled by losers of elections at the expense of a suffering public who will not benefit from these CAS only there to draw fat salaries for nothing.

According to data from the Salaries Remuneration Commission, the taxpayers will pay these CASs Sh468 million annually in salaries. The CASs will also be paid an additional Sh45 million in benefits while the government is increasing taxes to burden even more on those who can least afford them.

This is clearly a misplaced priority and a lost opportunity the president can fix by rescinding the CAS appointments. And that will only be a dent in the bloated government—but a meaningful dent as that money can be used to help alleviate the cost of living by providing food subsidies for those most in need.

Third, there is unnecessary spending and waste in government that the president has thus far failed to bring under control. To his credit, however, the president did recently have the Chief of Staff issue a memo halting reimbursement for expenses incurred by government officials and staff for the notoriously mostly useless “benchmarking” and other nonessential travel.

This is a step in the right direction, but the question is will this memo be followed? The government being the government, it wouldn’t surprise anyone that the memo will be ignored or those determined will find their way around it.

In sum, the time for Ruto to shine is now if he does the right things.

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