President Ruto promised voters heaven during the campaign period. Kenyans were between a rock and a hard place. Either go for this seemingly promising voice or carry on with the policies of then President Uhuru Kenyatta through Raila Odinga.
It is regrettably appalling though that a year down the line, there is nothing to write home about. The Ruto regime continues to hurl stones at the former president. Uhuru and his team remain the 'bad boys' who minced our economy into rotten pulverised meat.
The current administration has done nothing significant to resuscitate the economy, which seems to have been in a coma. Someone should boldly tell the President that Kenyans in their overwhelming majority are getting disillusioned with his dictatorial tendencies and oppressive tax regime.
The taxes and levies are too much for a middle-income economy such as ours, and life is becoming unbearable with each passing day.
The economy is bleeding from all fronts and, I dare say, beyond accessing power to distribute resources for the public good, politics in the current Kenya is all about self-interests and individualised priorities.
On the flip side, the common voter is on the receiving end. Unbeknown to the common mwananchi, the by-product of any political process is political leaders on the path of fulfilling their post-election manifestos and enriching their emptied sacks and granaries to the chagrin of the poverty-stricken voters.
Like war, there's no safe politics, and all have casualties to safeguard interests. Of all the things that the Kenya Kwanza government promised before taking power in August 2022, none have come to fruition. If anything, the government is on the run to overtax the ailing economy.
The ever-escalating oil prices are quite alarming. What role do our leaders play? Are they legions of doom conspiring with profiteering merchants to squeeze off the lives of struggling citizenry? If they cannot voice our concerns then who will?
Do they even bother to talk about the price of unga? Or do they just majestically milk our coffers dry and sprinkle sweeteners on the loudest civil society? This paints a grim picture of the current state of Kenya and may portend a bleak future for Kenyans.
The unrelentingly skyrocketing cost of power, food and other tariffs imposed on the citizenry of this country is not just mind-boggling but also disheartening. Serious and correct questions ought to be asked. Can we divorce the state of our economy from leadership or are they conjoined? Or are they awkward bedfellows?
Our suffering begins and ends with leadership or should I say, leadership is the alpha and omega of our suffering? Simply put: everything rises and falls on the leadership.
Great economies like the Asian Tigers were once our age mates economically and politically; but today, we are many years behind them, the gap seemingly widening unceasingly. This economic gap is highly attributable to over-taxation.
Over-taxation witnessed currently is the biggest conspiracy of our time. As a developing economy, we are incessantly wallowing in a quagmire that seems to be worsening with each waning moon. We are a country led by a people whose god is their stomachs and their high priest is wealth.
Do not be fooled, it is only you and me who feel the pinch. For them, every passing moment is a holiday. They have explored every nook and cranny of our ignorance to push us deeper into economic chaos as we use every energy in our fibre to serenade them. It is the allegory of the man on the guillotine smiling at the hangman, and in the end, getting hanged altogether.
In this predicament, we try to pop out our heads to catch a glimpse of a revolution akin to the infamous Arab Spring of 2011. A leviathan of a python is bracing to crush us into smithereens before gulping us down like a drink offered for sacrifice to an unknown deity; lest we gather at our own Tahrir Square of Kenya.
Kenyans from all walks of life ought to combine efforts to pressure the government to heed our call for a reduction of taxation and reduction of prices of consumable commodities.
It must be our unyielding commitment to maintain our country as an example of freedom, democracy and purposive progress in Africa. The idea that elite political over taxation, poor policies and fiscal inexpediencies should eternally hold the country at ransom should be discarded forthwith.
Communication practitioner and social commentator