Kenyans will be thoroughly spoilt for choice in 2017

Governors have quickly become the most popular public officials in Kenya, putting MPs — those puerile pretenders to leadership — in the shade with their guts and chutzpah. If they are not splurging on police vehicles, purchasing and flagging off tens of tractors, or buying top of the range vehicles festooned with official pennants, they are buying tomes of political literature for their voters’ re-education.

Their budgets are perfumed with anti-pornography programmes and generous provisions for spending on entertainment. No wonder they want to take over the regulation of drug abuse and trafficking.

Just for the practice run of hosting official state banquets, few governors have spared any effort in entertaining members of their county assemblies by taking them on retreats out of the county to promote local tourism and nurture good neighbourliness. Throw in the occasional foreign junket to experience first-hand how devolution works in East Cambodia, and the men and women who are the law – Members of the County Assembly – have been singing like a choir.

Of course the governors know that spending is always a comfortable companion to income, hence their inspired schemes to create wealth. Within less than a year, most governors have demonstrated their dexterous skills and talents in balancing the politics and management of counties with such aplomb that they are already beginning to silently give off a presidential air. Nothing has exposed the financial acumen and daring dreams of Kenya’s heads of government more than the new taxes for requiring burial upon death, handling and purveying chickens or running motorcycles.

PASSIONS IN CHECK

Everywhere, the probity of governors is being rewarded with offers to continue in office indefinitely without the bother of an election, which undemocratic gift has been promptly spurned.

Their passions always in check, their cool tongues and easy manner make the blood of women boil, but they are most penitent when their conduct causes even the slightest offence. For their contrition, governors have been on receiving end of forgiveness from their friends and political foes alike for offences they did not commit.

Counties are running like clockwork, with no garbage in the urban centres, development planned, services running smoothly and investors flocking in to make and mint money for local populations.

Were it not for the underhand machinations of the national government undermining devolution and frustrating governors by preventing them from spending money, the counties would have taken off and become middle-income economies already. Where the national government is struggling to collect taxes from unwilling citizens, people in the counties are lining up to support their government.

GOING FAR

It is the fear of the governors succeeding and creating competition for the national leadership that is driving the variegated efforts to cut their legs and prevent them from ultimately ascending to the presidency one after the other.

Kenyans wanted managers in the counties, university degree holders divorced from the nonsense of politics — they got that and much more. They elected the next generation of leaders who will rescue the country from its backwardness in less than a generation. Looking at Kenya, it is obvious that the country will no longer be held hostage to the same political choices that have riven it with divisions in the past. On the basis of their competence alone, the governors are going far — they will all end up in State House — even if it is through the backdoor.

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