Four lessons from Jubilee Party's New Year moves
Madaraka Express arrives at the Mombasa Terminus in Miritini from Nairobi in July last year.
What you need to know:
The first week of the toughest month of the year brought the gloomy news that the State subsidy that saw Kenyans buy a 2kg packet of maize flour at Sh90 was being stopped.
The standard gauge railway, the President’s favourite project, has been widely criticised for the debt burden it has placed on generations of Kenyans.
Electricity consumers will also pay backdated bills that Kenya Power says have accumulated from February 2017.
The highly-charged political atmosphere in the third quarter of 2017 has given way to relative calm in the New Year. But there is a bit to learn from interesting early decisions by the Jubilee administration already.
Feeding trough
President Uhuru Kenyatta most likely hoped that everyone would check out the personal profiles of the six ministers he has retained in his cabinet and conclude that his decision was informed purely by individual performance.
Yet the more discerning observers will study the dockets whose custodians were spared the axe and see a consistent pattern of appointments that earned Mr Kenyatta’s administration the exclusionist tag in his first term. Amid free-flowing Chinese funds for infrastructure development, the Transport and Infrastructure, Energy, ICT and the Treasury are Jubilee cash cows.
Nothing marks out Kenya’s ethnic power duopoly like the surnames of those who control these dockets.
Besides rewarding Dr Fred Matiang’i and Mr Najib Balala’s loyalty, the major thing the President did with his partial cabinet unveiling on Friday was secure the feeding trough.
2010 Constitution fights for its life
If the last five years of the Uhuru administration was about sticking the knife into the Constitution to try to reclaim the powers of the imperial presidency, the next are likely to be about twisting the knife to confirm the return of that kind of leadership.
On Friday, Mr Kenyatta replaced the two deputy inspectors-general of police, wielding powers reclaimed via earlier changes to a law that hitherto gave the responsibility to an independent National Police Service Commission. It bucks a trend where the independent institutions created to check the presidency have either been significantly weakened or captured. The National Land Commission, the Controller of Budget, the Salaries and Remuneration Commission, name it.
Time to pay the Jubilee debt
What a way to start off a January! The first week of the toughest month of the year brought the gloomy news that the State subsidy that saw Kenyans buy a 2kg packet of maize flour at Sh90 was being stopped.
Media reports suggest consumers may pay up to double that price to get the staple. As if that is not enough, electricity consumers will also pay backdated bills that Kenya Power says have accumulated from February 2017. The maize subsidy and lower electricity bills were meant to bait voters in an election year. With the polls behind us, Kenyans are waking up to the reality that it was a Jubilee debt they have to pay.
SGR overpromised
The standard gauge railway, the President’s pet project, has been widely criticised for the debt burden it has placed on generations of Kenyans. But things could get worse. There was excitement on Monday about the arrival of the first cargo train at Nairobi depot with 104 containers. The second one failed to arrive two days later because there was no cargo to fill it.
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