According to President William Ruto, fake news is misleading citizens on what the State is doing.

Addressing a graduation gathering at the National Defence University of Kenya (NDU-K) in Lanet, Nakuru county, on 20 November, he decried the impact that misinformation and disinformation have had on public trust and confidence in the country’s governance institutions.

“Because of the different spaces of available information, it’s much easier to inform, educate and entertain, but it’s also equally easy to misinform and disinform the public with fake news that travels miles before the truth can be established,” he lamented, even as he directed the NDU-K to work with partners and restore the role of parents, family, religion, and the wider society in bringing up morally upright and patriotic citizens who not only see the bad side of governance institutions but also affirm the positive.

The President seems to have been wittingly or unknowingly careful not to mention the influence that State officers, public officials and the institutions they represent or lead have on the level of citizens’ trust and confidence in the institutions.

Contrary to what he asserted – that it’s the spaces available for accessing and sharing information that lead to misinformation and disinformation, and the subsequent loss of trust in public institutions – leaders and the public institutions they are entrusted to steer bear the greatest responsibility on how the public view the institutions and their leaders.

With globalisation and attendant proliferation of information, technological revolution in communication seems to have become a threat to those in power, as governments the world over find themselves having to constantly play catch-up with the pace at which citizens are able to access and disseminate information.

For instance, as a result of today‘s technological advancements, Gen Z–led protests earlier in the year against punitive taxes in Kenya ignited similar protests, linking up and resonating with grievances of other political networks and audiences across local, national and international boundaries, with consequential ramifications elsewhere, such as Uganda, Nigeria and Bangladesh.

Obviously, such are the groundbreaking movements that political and economic elites would really wish they could nip in the bud, lest they become part of a growing statistics of governments that have been swept aside by citizens expressing their dissatisfaction with leaders who seem to be unresponsive to their pressing social and economic needs.

Such is the fate that befell Bangladesh’s prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, after weeks of anti-government protests, bringing to a tumultuous end more than two decades of her domination of the country’s politics.

Kenya’s Constitution, promulgated in 2010 after decades of political manipulation that transcended the country’s independence from British colonial occupation, envisages a framework for leadership founded on integrity, and a set of codified values and principles that expressly guide actions that those in leadership take in the management of public affairs.

It’s not for their aesthetic appeal that framers of the Constitution followed through with the popular demand for integrity in leadership as articulated in Chapter Six, in addition to the national values and principles of governance under Article 10.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an international organisation of 38 member countries including Kenya, has over the years provided its members with the data, tools and solutions they may need to assess public trust in institutions of government, understand long-term trends and enable them to take policy actions targeted at the root causes of low trust.

Coincidentally, the OECD tools also underscore the need to be transparent, responsive, inclusive, and competent; and to be value-based and lead by example.

In response to the President’s directive, the NDU-K need not reinvent the wheel. All it needs to do is walk the President on Chapter Two of the OECD tool on the influence of integrity on public trust, with emphasis that corruption and mismanagement in the public sector are the most cited sources of mistrust in governance institutions.
— The writer is the Executive Director of the Kenya National Civil Society Centre; [email protected]