If you are a regular reader of the opinion columns of local newspapers, you will by now have come across furious expressions of disgust over the many promises being thrown around by leading presidential candidates.
The critics can be divided between those who are disgusted that such promises are being made at all. And those who are willing enough to see promises made but are disgusted that the promises are not followed up with any coherent explanation as to how exactly these promises are to be fulfilled.
In my view the sane thing to do here is to consider these promises as a form of extravagant political theatre.
But at the same time to remember that sometimes those who ascend to high office do actually succeed in fulfilling their promises to the voters.
The outstanding recent example was when (the now retired) President Mwai Kibaki promised free primary school education during his campaigns for the presidency in 2002.
On the face of it, one would think that this was just another empty promise. But Kibaki actually managed to fulfil this promise, in the process freeing roughly 1.5 million children from the yoke of illiteracy and poverty to which they had previously been doomed for lack of school fees.
But this is just the exception that proves the rule. Generally speaking, these promises made when a candidate is addressing a large partisan crowd mean nothing. Not because the candidate is necessarily lying, but more because what Kenyan presidents usually end up doing, is to closely follow on the achievements of their predecessors.
Promises of great and immediate progress tend to be delusionary. Once in office, what any president is likely to find – if we are to go by our national history over the past 60 years or so – is that they are obliged to take small incremental steps.
My favourite example here is of the greatly improved roads network that we now have in Kenya. For within living memory, our roads were so bad that even the most important highways were pothole-ridden to an extent that lorries and buses found it more practical to go off-road for many miles when going through the worst sections.
Progress towards what we have now (not that it is by any means perfect, but it is definitely a vast improvement) began with the creation of the Kenya Roads Board, by an Act of Parliament back in the year 2000.
Yes, this great transformation of our road networks actually began 20 years ago under the Daniel Moi regime. It was then greatly accelerated under President Kibaki and has now been escalated even further by President Uhuru Kenyatta.
And I should add here that although the creation of the Kenya Roads Board was a historic event (in a way that few of us realised back then) in time it was to be just one of a number of autonomous and semi-autonomous government agencies dedicated to extending and improving our roads networks.
So how exactly were plans for such crucial infrastructure made before the year 2000? Well, strange as it may sound now, decisions on where and when roads were to be built were a presidential prerogative.
The only way you got any road either improved or built from scratch, was by inviting the president to visit the constituency concerned (which of course had better be one which was “loyal” to His Excellency). The local leaders would then make a passionate plea for the construction (or improvement) of that road, intermingled with pledges of undying loyalty to the president. And with a wave of the presidential hand, the serving Minister for Public Works would be told to attend to the request.
But back to those promises, other examples could be given in such things as our hopes for evolving into a newly-industrialised nation; faster job creation; expansion of the social welfare safety net; poverty reduction programmes; better incomes for farmers; etc.
In all and any of these, the candidates may well promise all kinds of breathtakingly transformational changes and speak in revolutionary terms.
But in the end the real progress we may expect to see would be largely slow and gradual – and above all, built on what has been created by the outgoing president.
