Over the past few years, and more so at the beginning of this year, there have been numerous concerns about Kenya’s debt levels and government spending. This is especially with regard to recurrent expenditure and mega projects.
In February the International Monetary Fund advised Kenya to formulate clear policies to address the “debt vulnerability”, which could rise further if she continued her borrowing trends.
The debt has skyrocketed due to the proliferation of development projects; runaway corruption that decimates one third of the budget; last year’s two elections and recurrent expenditures such as salaries for a bloated staff at the national and county levels. As such, there is a real need for the government to cut down on recurrent expenditure; close all corruption loopholes and institute serious austerity measures.
Austerity measures are attempts to significantly curtail government spending in an effort to control public sector debt, particularly when a nation is in jeopardy of defaulting on its bonds. This may require changes in
government programmes to limit the terms of unemployment benefits; reduction in government wages and benefits; increase of retirement age; social welfare programme cuts; tax reforms that increase
income taxes, target tax evasion; and perhaps privatisation of public businesses to raise money to pay debts.
We have seen a number of these measures employed to try to curtail government spending. For instance, the retirement age was raised from 55 to 60 in the Kibaki era; fuel guzzlers for senior government officials were at one time removed from public service when President Uhuru was Finance minister (it is unclear how they found their way back); recently, taxes have been increased and a number of government sectors have had their budgets cut.
Last week, the Chief Justice held a press conference and complained of severe budget cuts by government that would literally halt all Judicial Service Commission (JSC) development projects. This would stop the implementation of mobile courts; derail the case backlog programme and ICT improvement; as well as paralyse the running of the JSC itself.
The National Assembly allocated the Senate and itself Sh46 billion; gave the National Intelligence Service Sh33 billion from the current Sh22 billion; slashed the embattled National Youth Service's allocation by Sh8 billion; and gave the EACC and ODPP about Sh3.9 billion each.
Which begs the question: What informed the budget cuts to the Judiciary?
The government, through the National Assembly and the Executive, should inform Kenyans whether or not Kenya is officially practising austerity. If so, what steps has the government taken to reduce the useless “benchmarking trips” by government officials. Any country practising austerity can never even consider using taxpayers' money to finance legislators to attend the World Cup.
We should also be privy to information on the rationale of increasing allocations to some organisations while slashing others. Austerity cannot be selective. It should be across the board. Otherwise, observers will be forced to come to other conclusions as to why the Judiciary, which is literally a co-equal to the Legislative and Executive, has been singled out for drastic budget cuts. It is one of the few government institutions seen as transformative and which still enjoy overwhelming public confidence.
We should be told whether, in their opinion, the fight against corruption can only be won by selectively increasing intelligence gathering, prosecution and investigations capacity - while depriving the Judiciary.
The building of law courts, improvement of ICT connectivity, and elimination of case backlogs are important cogs in the State’s constitutional duty to ensure access to justice for all Kenyans as per Article 48. Furthermore, Article 159 provides, among other things that justice shall be done to all irrespective of their status (such as those in marginalised or remote areas that can benefit from mobile courts), it should not be delayed (thus the need to eliminate case backlogs) and that procedural technicalities should not be used as a bar to achieving substantive justice.
Parliament and the Executive should remember that they, just as the Judiciary, are only exercising powers delegated to them by the sovereign people of Kenya. They are all mandated to perform their co-equal duties and functions in accordance with the Constitution – for the good of the people of Kenya who are the custodians of all sovereign power.
Senior programmes officer, Article 19 Eastern Africa
Email: Twitter: @kipdemas