A curious philosophy has taken root in Kenyan government circles in the past few months. It’s the fraudulent notion that public discontent with President Ruto’s policies stems not from the policies themselves, but from “poor communication”.

This self-serving perspective, propagated even by the President himself, suggests that if only citizens properly understood government initiatives, they would embrace them wholeheartedly. This view raises interesting questions about how government officials perceive public engagement and democratic discourse.

The line of thinking appears to have already solidified by the time of the June anti-tax protests. The President’s response to the demos was telling. Rather than addressing the substance of the young protesters’ concerns, he blamed his communication team for failing to “explain ourselves better”.

The implication was as clear as it was insulting: the protesters weren’t really opposing the policies – they simply didn’t understand them. This insincere stance conveniently ignored the protesters’ well-articulated objections to provisions in the bill.

Now the phoney lament, “We should have communicated better”, has become a standard refrain among bureaucrats. Department heads deflect criticism by suggesting that their initiatives are simply misunderstood rather than potentially flawed. This way, legitimate public criticism is trivialised and transformed into a mere communication problem to be solved through “better messaging”.

The absurd viewpoint enjoys institutional support from unexpected quarters. The Media Council of Kenya (MCK), ostensibly an independent media standards body, reinforced this perspective when its CEO suggested late last year in an opinion piece that “insufficient or unproductive messaging” was responsible for “minimal” public engagement with six core pillars of Ruto’s development agenda.

The MCK boss’s predictable suggested solution – more training for government communications personnel, which the entity inevitably proceeded to conduct – seemed to miss the point entirely.

This fixation on communication strategy reveals a basic misunderstanding of how democracy is supposed to work. When citizens protest against higher taxes or oppose government policies, it’s not because they fail to understand them – it’s often because they understand them all too well. The government’s communication-centric explanation infantilises us, suggesting that those of us outside the government are incapable of comprehending and evaluating policies.

This narrative also conveniently shifts responsibility away from the substance of policies and onto the way they’re presented to the public. It’s far easier to blame poor communication than to acknowledge that maybe some policies truly don’t serve the public interest or require substantial revision.

The Ruto administration, too heavily invested in optics and perceptions, is confusing communication with conviction. No amount of sophisticated messaging can make an unpopular policy palatable if it fails to address citizens’ needs and concerns.

When Kenyans protest against tax increases, they’re not expressing confusion – they’re demonstrating disagreement. When they criticise so-called affordable housing projects or question the purported benefits of the new public health insurance scheme, they’re basing their objections on real-world experiences, not because they’re too obtuse to understand policies.

This approach also misunderstands the role of the media in a democratic society. The media’s primary function isn’t to be a government messaging service, but to serve as a watchdog, critically examining policies and their impact on citizens. When the MCK and others suggest that better media relations would solve popularity problems, they’re essentially asking for more favourable coverage rather than more accurate reporting.

Of course, it would help everyone if government officials were better communicators. But they should also be better listeners and be more responsive and willing to modify policies based on feedback from citizens.

Instead of pursuing more polished messaging strategies, officials should try to understand why citizens oppose certain policies in the first place. This could mean acknowledging that some policies – however noble the underlying intentions – may need to be revised or even abandoned altogether. Public disapproval should lead officials to reflection, or even retreat, not bogus self-reproach.

— The writer is a Sub-Editor with People Daily-