Revenue brawl proves ineptitude

The continuing impasse over the revenue sharing formula displays monumental failure of leadership.

It exposes a president who has lost command of his troops amid a dysfunctional government and ruling party. It also reveals the sorry state of an opposition that has sold its soul to the devil and is absolutely unable to offer alternative policy prescriptions and to project itself as a government-in-waiting.

The first failure falls squarely on those elected to run this country. It is now more than obvious that President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto are distracted by damaging feuds which have reduced the Jubilee regime to a sorry caricature of government. The contested formula on revenue allocation to county governments is not a Jubilee position but the preference of a selfish and short-sighted grouping.

President Kenyatta has allowed himself to be caught up in a murky conflict where he is bound to be the big loser. Instead of a coming out as a unifier and President of all Kenya, he has in the public eye reduced himself to an bigot out to grab his ethnic community and other populous and advantaged groups more than their fair share of the national wealth.

Government is losing badly

Without going into the finer details of the formula before the Senate, or the various amendments on the table, it is clear that the government is losing badly on the public perception front. It is seen to perpetuate the economic inequities and skewed development inherited from colonialism and codified under the infamous Kibaki-Mboya “Sessional Paper Number 10 of 1965 on African Socialism and its Application to Planning in Kenya”.

The paper, neither African nor socialist, entrenched a policy where resources were steered towards ‘productive’ regions, leaving the bulk of Kenya marginalised and under-developed.

The foot soldiers pushing this agenda in the Senate make it clear that they are motivated only by selfish ethnic resource grabs and rather than any principled resource allocation formula. They are not ashamed to dismiss as lazy inhabitants of the Coast, north eastern Kenya, parts of the Rift Valley and other large, sparsely populated and undeveloped regions that lose out on the new policy.

The new push has had the effect of introducing new fissures in the broken Jubilee ship beyond the Uhuru-Ruto divide. And that is where the Deputy President comes in.

Voice of reason

Dr Ruto, from early on, seemed like the voice of reason. He urged dialogue and pleaded with the senators to craft a win-win formula rather than the divisive one now on the table. But beyond that he offered no specific prescription out of the logjam; neither did he rally his troops in the Senate to do the right thing. Indeed, a good number of senators allied to Dr Ruto are backing President Kenyatta on this.

A group fronted by ousted Majority Leader Kipchumba Murkomen has been vocal and active in rejecting the contentious formula but they can hardly claim to be pushing the DP’s position as he has not publicly supported them.

Then we have ‘former’ Opposition leader Raila Odinga. The ODM titan came back from medical treatment in Dubai with a statement seen to back the contentious formula. That was probably not surprising since he has generally backed President Kenyatta without question since the ‘Handshake’ that calmed the post-2017 elections animus.

Soon afterwards, he realised that he might be on the wrong side of history and released another statement echoing Dr Ruto’s call for a win-win resolution. But like Dr Ruto, he offered no specific prescription. Meanwhile, his key pointmen in the Senate, led by Minority Leader James Orengo, were actively canvassing for the contentious revenue allocations.

Equitable development

Mr Odinga’s position has further left the putative opposition rudderless and confused. He has also failed to seize the moment to put the issues of revenue allocation and equitable development as key justifications for the Building Bridges Initiative. Instead, he continues to project BBI as merely a short-term political engineering geared towards the 2020 elections rather than long-term solutions to the historical injustices.

He insists that Kenya must have a referendum by year-end, a wildly premature call when the report produced by the BBI task force is yet to be officially released. In short, there is, as of now, no referendum question — unless Mr Odinga is inadvertently letting out that he had had a sneak preview of the BBI recommendations.

Then we have the Speaker of the Senate Ken Lusaka. On that one, the less said the better of a man swiftly distinguishing himself as the worst head of any Kenyan legislative arm since Independence.

[email protected] @MachariaGaitho www.gaitho.co.ke