KANYADUDI: Ruto’s Beta fruits: Equity and pragmatism

At the height of his bitter fallout with his compatriot and coalition partner Uhuru Kenyatta, President William Ruto carefully weaved a novel policy platform.

He developed a manifesto that sought to radically transform the economic infrastructure of the country. At the core was the model to invest in the small and microenterprises.

This was intended to directly uplift the lower cadres in the economic pyramid. It was to make them self-reliant and capable of self-propulsion for upward mobility. This was a sharp departure from the cyclic policy of trickle down effect borrowed and regularly revised from the 1965 Sessional Paper No 1.  The Tom Mboya brainchild was intended to invest in the perceived high economic potential. It was anticipated and hoped that the high performance would spur economic growth downstream.

The focus was on the former colonial white highlands which coincidentally now belonged to the citizens of Central Kenya region. Unfortunately, the envisaged trickle down never became and the policy led marginalisation of many regions. It was not only regions that were marginalised, but also large populations within the white highlands. Those who were not privileged to access credit and state patronage to acquire plantations from the departing Europeans became destitute in their homelands. They had to offer their labour in these farms to earn a living. Others had to resort to petty trades and became hawkers in Nairobi and other towns and urban centres. The policy resulted in a country of economic contradictions.

On the one hand, there emerged wealthy cartels who soon transformed into the modern nation’s oligarchs. On the other hand, were the lumpen proletariats who relied on their sweat and lived from hand to mouth. The inequalities soon created tensions among the citizens and on more than one occasion boiled over violent confrontations.

These confrontations regularly occurred during instances of political and electoral disputes. Ruto, therefore, developed a philosophy to right this historical wrong which had become an injustice and a festering wound in the fabric of the country’s nationhood. The hustler versus dynasty campaign was intended to establish an equitable framework for the distribution of the wealth of the nation.

The hustler movement rattled the status quo. Political order as had been known and practised since independence was threatened. It dichotomised the society into the haves and have-nots. For the first time the underprivileged of the society felt they had a voice in the high table of national political leadership.

At the time of his presidential candidature, Ruto was serving as deputy president and the first as such. They had fallen out with his boss who openly supported the opposition candidate Raila Odinga to succeed him. Ruto’s economic campaign was revolutionary and enjoined the leadership of religious society. The women and youth who had suffered economic deprivation for decades became the main planks of the movement. Rhetorical rebuttals from the centre of political establishment only helped to bolden the resolve of the hustler movement leadership.

The efforts of the government mandarins to use the criminal justice system to stem the spiralling of the movement created a sense of victimhood. Ruto and his compatriots were viewed as martyrs of the people’s economic and political redemption. For the first time in the history of the country, a strong presidential candidate emerged from outside the ranks of the lineage of families of the founding fathers.

Ruto had successfully galvanised widespread support across the country to challenge existing narratives about national leadership. His message was crisp and resonated with a majority of the citizens, even though the established intellectual and political order remained cynical and skeptical. The manifesto was dismissed as lacking in philosophical grounding and historical experience. The onslaught from the opponents was vicious, bankrolled by the mainstream capital and buoyed by state patronage. But Ruto and his team remained unmoved, focused and weathered the storm.

Upon winning the election and assumption of office, Ruto immediately transformed the campaign manifesto into a development policy paper Beta. The Bottom Up Economic Transformation Agenda was innovative and designed to uplift the poor. The government initiative aims to foster inclusive growth and improve the livelihoods of Kenyans by investing in key sectors.

The informal sector was to be empowered to become more productive and join the mainstream economic strata. However, it should be noted that contrary to the prediction of the naysayers, this did not come at the expense of the established businesses and the traditional capitalist investments. Instead an environment was created that ensured the business environment was conducive and supported economic growth of existing big enterprises.

 It was to nurture an environment for socioeconomic transformation with five pillars of: agricultural transformation; micro, small and medium enterprise economy; healthcare; housing and settlement and digital superhighway and creative industry.  Infrastructure has been identified as a critical enabler for the attainment of success in these sectors and thus appropriate investment is being made in this front.

The government’s current objectives of Beta by 2027-28 include bringing down the cost of living by lowering the annual inflation rates to five per cent, eradicating hunger, creating 1,200,000 jobs annually, expanding the tax base to increase revenue collection to 19.7 per cent of GDP and improving foreign exchange. Beta has been and will continue to be implemented through five MTP IV sectors, namely: finance and production; infrastructure; social; environment and natural resources; and governance and public administration. After the formation of the broad-based government through a coalition agreement between UDA and ODM, the Ruto administration is more effective in service delivery. It is endowed with a blend of unique human resource and nationwide political goodwill.