How UhuRuto played Pastor Kanyari on the youth at Kasarani

The Jubilee manifesto launch at Kasarani Stadium last Monday was fun to watch on TV.

From the music, the lighting, the colour to the casting of largely non-Kikuyu and non-Kalenjin Cabinet secretaries to speak at the event, it was simply a performance to behold.

President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto hardly fluffed their lines reeling out one great achievement after another from their administration’s scripted scorecard.

FALSEHOOD
You’ve got to give it to the former dynamic duo; few leaders possess the confidence and the communication skills to speak about Galana-Kulalu Irrigation Project publicly in the middle of a national food crisis and somehow make it sound good.

Call UK, as Mr Kenyatta is fondly called by his buddies, to the stage, and he will build you 10,000km of tarmac roads across the country in three years!

Give Bill the mike, and he will build you nine stadiums in nine counties on the spot!

Yet this was also a performance that exposed UhuRuto as a snake oil merchant – the Pastor Kanyari of Kenya’s politics.

EMPLOYMENT
Some of the promises made at the Kasarani night show, especially to the youth, brought out the cunning side of leaders desperate to exploit every misfortune around to win votes.

Good luck if you are a final-year university student out there and you believe you and 99,999 others will get internship jobs upon graduation in an economy where reports of companies retrenching staff or relocating to other countries are the order of the day.

You must have found that story about 30 per cent of government tenders reserved for the youth, the women, the disabled and other disadvantaged groups in society familiar though.

Yes, it was brought up at Kasarani, again!

DISADVANTAGED GROUPS
Some time last year, the Sunday Nation published an investigative story that revealed that some of the public funds set aside under Access to Government Procurement Opportunities (Agpo) for the disadvantaged groups ended up in the pockets of rich ruling class elites.

Among those lining up at the AGPO feeding trough was Sundales, a company owned by the President’s sister and cousin.

Take a guess how many more privileged people got a snout in, crowding out the disadvantaged groups.

AGPO is, of course, only one of the fronts the Jubilee elites opened for looting taxpayer funds in the name of the youth.

NYS SCANDAL
The taxpayer also got the wrong end of the stick in the National Youth Service (NYS) programme, promoted by the architects as the magic bullet against unemployment in slums and rural areas.

The Auditor-General put the amount of money stolen in the NYS scheme at Sh791 million.

The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission said it could rise to Sh1.8 billion.

And who can forget the looting games at the Youth Employment and Development Fund where officials signed cheques on a whim?

Wherever you turn your nose, the Jubilee youth project stinks.

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