What Uhuru didn’t tell you about his promises

Let me strike the iron while it is still hot on Jubilee’s grand promises by saying the days ahead are going to be tougher. That is not to say President Uhuru Kenyatta’s dream promises won’t be delivered, but it will be at great cost to you and me. 

In doing so, we need to look at three things in his speech.

He spoke of the backbreaking burden of public wage bill, which currently is Sh458 billion annually! In his quick mathematics, this translates to more than 12 per cent of Kenya’s Gross Domestic Product, way above the internationally accepted standard of seven per cent.

Now let us take it for a fact that you have a 10-acre farm and 10 employees and you have discovered they are not producing enough to afford you enough cashflow and their bonuses at the end of the year.  Secondly, you realise that their salaries constitute unreasonably higher percentage of your annual earnings.

There are certain things you will do, and no doubt Uhuru, who we shall soon call the ‘Austerity President’ because he has in the past shown he can cut down on wastage to bolster public revenue streams through his war on four-wheel luxury vehicles, will do it.

To make it less painful, as Uhuru hinted, you the chap who owns the 10-acre farm, will first see if there are leakages in the revenue collections. You will want to ensure all that is due to you gets to you. So you will look keenly at how much the harvest is and litres of milk each cow gives.

You will also review the other freebies you give them, such as free food and milk. You will threaten to scale it down or scrap if they do not work hard enough.

You will also walk around the 10-acre farm and see if there are breakages in the fence that thieves may be using to steal you produce. You will also look at the integrity of the employees, and see which one is likely to be doing magendo on your farm and shortchanging you.

Then you will also consider diversifying your farming methods, see if there are more reliable crops or animals you may need to introduce. You will assess if you are using cost-effective growing and breeding systems.

Then because you come to the point that breaks your heart and which you didn’t want to start with, as you know your employees have children that depend on what you pay them. But this is the bitterest pill you have to swallow; that of downsizing, retrenching, or whatever you call it, even if it’s ‘reorganisation of functions to achieve efficiency’ as private sector mandarins call it.

I mean to say this in fewer words and more succinctly than the way Uhuru put it, because as you know he is aware there is a partying mood in his coalition, and he is not out to spoil it. So he must first placate the country with high-sounding promises, but then play down the cost of getting it.

But did Uhuru really conceal it that much in regard to the promises to be achieved within 100 days, including splashing public funds on youths and women, and opening up public maternity for every mother at no cost? Not at all, he just glossed them over with nice and punchy lines on patriotism, his own dream for Kenya and that of fathers of Independence, as well as the preaching of greater efficiency and embracing better productivity methods.Here is the operating paragraph in Uhuru speech to elected members on Tuesday afternoon: “We must seal the leakages in our revenue collection system and extend the tax base”.

acting ‘digital’

You see, Uhuru is dealing with the issue much in the same way you the owner of 10-acre farm will do. My prediction, and I am not being cynical or skeptical but practical, is that given the grand promises Uhuru has made and the strict timelines he has given himself, and knowing Kenya’s appetite for ugali on the table, he may decide to implement all the strategies of the farm owner we talked about simultaneously.

This is all summed up in his other paragraph: “In line with our policy of streamlining government, we will combine the bodies that promote Kenya in all aspects of the economy to create a single agency…”

If you miss the fact that there will be downsizing then you missed the meaning of ‘streamlining’ in government corridors!

The point we are making is that Uhuru will try and seal all loopholes of wastages, unless of course he keeps up on the war against corruption as his predecessor did after ring-fencing himself with a tribal cabal.

My optimism, however, is punctured by the fact that Uhuru never mentioned corruption in his inaugural speech but in the second he came with a few lines: “I will act swiftly to end the scourge of corruption. Corruption makes our country less attractive as an investment destination. It limits access to much needed services, stifles efficiency and eats away at public values.”

In a nutshell, widening tax bases, sealing revenue leakages, streamlining functions, going for lean government and thinking and acting ‘digital’, means more than they sound. Uhuru was actually telling us we must first bake more cakes to pass around because the national cake we all know is too small for the greed of all of us.

Finally, Uhuru knew as he spoke that it was the week Kenya’s National Debt hit the Sh1 trillion mark! In other words, international creditors too are on our necks and we have been writing to them explaining why we are in arrears and can’t meet our monthly installments. Now you have no doubt what’s going on in Uhuru’s mind.