Fuel tax vote unveiled political order, made Uhuru lame duck

His spin doctors might say that President Uhuru Kenyatta displayed a great deal of leadership, and resolve, in bludgeoning a reluctant National Assembly against shooting down his veto on the petroleum tax proposals.

He had to make what he knew was an almost universally unpopular decision but one that he considered absolutely necessary for the Budget.

That’s what leadership is about. One must make decisions that will be vital for the long term, even if they are painful and unpopular with the voters.

It is only short-sighted and insecure leaders who will always play to the gallery with populist measures that will please the cheering crowds but will eventually have disastrous consequences.

That is the positive spin. The harsh reality is that the most President Kenyatta and his new ally, opposition leader Raila Odinga, achieved was a pyrrhic victory.

The President won the battle but lost the war.

BULLY

The very fact that his foot soldiers — led by National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi, Jubilee Party Majority Leader Aden Duale and Mr Odinga’s Nasa Minority Leader John Mbadi — had to employ extremely unorthodox tactics to ensure passage of his proposals is proof that the President earned no victory to be proud of.

The vote on Thursday was a classic example of a president trying to bully Parliament into submission, and when that failed, employing blatant fraud that may well make the outcome a nullity.

It was rigging in the best, or worst, playbook of the one-party Kanu dictatorship — the clearest example being the farcical queue-voting of the 1988 elections, when the shortest lines emerged victorious.

This is not just about the specific vote; its import is in the very clear demonstration that MPs who just a few months ago would have vowed to stand with President Kenyatta to death are now ready to defy and abandon their ‘muthamaki’.

The MPs from central Kenya who openly snubbed President Kenyatta, as well as the opposition ODM and Wiper blocs that similarly turned down appeals from their regional Nyanza and Ukambani kingpins, Odinga and Nasa co-principal Kalonzo Musyoka, respectively, did not do so out of commitment to the common man.

SELF-INTEREST

They lie when they claim it is ‘Wanjiku’ they are fighting for. No, it is their own political futures at stake.

There is nothing more hated than taxes. Any politician anywhere who supports excessive taxation, especially where the money is guaranteed to be lost to theft and grandiose white elephant projects, gives himself his own kiss of death.

Those MPs who loudly rejected the President’s memorandum on the Finance Bill amendments were motivated largely by self-interest, even if that happened to converge with public interest in the hostile reaction to oppressive taxation.

President Kenyatta will not feature in their political calculations because he is serving out his last term and will not be a candidate at the next General Election in 2022.

This is what Uhuru Kenyatta has to contend with. He has served only one year out of five, but is in great danger of being reduced to an early lame duck as politicians who rode to office on his coattails desert him in droves.

FINAL TERM

The message from fellows who swore eternal fealty was that he is irrelevant and impotent in the present and future scheme of things.

If President Kenyatta had not already realised that his loudest sycophants and cheerleaders are deserting him in his final term, he must have seen it on Thursday.

The vote may have had nothing to do with Jubilee succession politics but it served to reinforce a phenomenon that has been in evidence for much of this year.

Fellows whom President Kenyatta had pulled out of nowhere to give plum positions at State House realised early after his re-election that a president in his final term cannot guarantee them jobs beyond 2022.

Without as much as a ‘thank you’, they moved on and hitched their horses to the next best bet — Deputy President William Ruto.

BIG FOUR

So did a whole gamut of National Assembly members, senators, governors and other elected leaders from Mr Kenyatta’s central Kenya bastion who trooped to Mr Ruto’s well-oiled machinery.

The simple fact is that, for most politicians, individual fortunes are more important than the priorities of an outgoing or former leader out to craft a legacy or to remain relevant.

The President has lost his constituency. With that, even his ‘Big Four’ agenda, the fight against corruption and the Building Bridges ‘handshake’ that defanged Mr Odinga, will all be sabotaged from within.

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