Reasons for President’s rejection of pension Bill might not be so obvious

At first glance, it will seem mean, churlish, and petty for President Uhuru Kenyatta to deny former Prime Minister Raila Odinga and former Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka their retirement benefits.

It will be easy to read cheap and vindictive politics in the President refusing to give his assent to the Retirement Benefits (Deputy President and Designated State Officers) Bill, especially after the proposed package was allowed to go through the full process of parliamentary approval without his administration raising any objections.

This is a piece of legislation that has been in the pipeline in various forms since the dying days of the Kibaki administration. Having gone through numerous revisions, one would think that all chinks had been ironed out to the satisfaction of the government by the time it got the “Aye” in the National Assembly.

President Kenyatta’s refusal to give his assent has elicited a great deal of speculation in the absence of any immediate coherent explanation.

ONE SIDE OF THE STORY

Media reporting has had to rely on anonymous spins from people who claim intimate familiarity with the President’s thinking.

General concurrence seems to indicate that the President’s demands that Mr Odinga and Mr Musyoka — co-principals in the opposition Cord alliance and both declared presidential aspirants — first quit politics before he can approve their benefits.

That sounds like cheap and petty blackmail. It seems the President is telling two of his probable challengers at the next elections that they will not get their dues if they continue to pose a political threat to his regime.

Now, this is public money, not the President’s. It would be absolutely unacceptable for the President to deny his rivals their just dues on petty and selfish considerations.

However, that is looking at only one side of the story.

The big question here is what exactly “retirement” means in the political sense.

Just before he relinquished office, President Mwai Kibaki approved a law granting himself an ultra-generous retirement package but rejected a deal granting slightly more moderate perks to his co-principal in the Grand Coalition government, Prime Minister Odinga, and Vice President Musyoka. It took a Private Members Bill, crafted by Suba MP John Mbadi, to try and give Mr Odinga and Mr Musyoka what had been denied them by President Kibaki.

From all the headlines and debate since the latest version was rejected by President Kenyatta, one would imagine that the proposal was entitled the “Raila-Kalonzo Retirement Benefits Bill”. 

Lost in all the hoopla has been the fact that the only designation in the title is that of “Deputy President” and neither of the aforementioned gentlemen fit that description. It might be argued, therefore, that if President Kenyatta has denied anyone his rightful retirement perks, it is his serving Deputy President and Jubilee coalition co-principal, Mr William Ruto.

COLD AND RATIONAL

This might then bring the argument that Mr Ruto cannot be the target since he is still in office and certainly not retired, so the benefits will only come to apply to him once officially in hibernation. But does this then mean that Mr Odinga and Mr Musyoka can be gauged differently from Mr Ruto and thus deserving immediate access to their retirement benefits?

The obvious conclusion is that as long as they are still active in politics, leading political parties, and angling for elective office, they have not retired and thus cannot claim retirement benefits.

This conclusion I draw is not in support of the hackneyed spin from State House on how the President should not fund his rivals. Neither is it grounded on the cheap politics of vendetta that predominates in the Jubilee camp. It is simply a cold and rational look at the situation.

Mr Odinga and Mr Musyoka should respond not with crybaby antics, but with firm and resolute determination that they will not be blackmailed into abandoning the quest to replace the Jubilee leadership.

Meanwhile, we wait for President Kenyatta’s memorandum to Parliament explaining his rejection of the Bill. Chances are it will show the fingerprints of the campaign activists who seem to craft his thinking on serious issues at the expense of wise and sober counsel.

That will be clear if he only wants to add his retired cronies to the list of intended beneficiaries.

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