Wiper Patriotic Front Party leader Kalonzo Musyoka has scoffed at President William Ruto’s Singapore dream, saying it is an empty façade which will not materialise for Kenya.

In an interview on a local TV station on Sunday, December 21, 2025, Kalonzo said the dream is unrealistic, especially when the economy is dwindling.

“How do you make Kenya Singapore when 6000 companies have migrated to Tanzania, to Uganda and our youth are unemployed? He posed.

“What Ruto has done is to throw a dead cat syndrome on the table.”

Incidentally, the Wiper chief drew a comparison with the Kenya Vision 2030, which he argues, despite having sustainable and realistic goals and objectives, has still not made the country punch above its weight since its birth.

“Kenya was supposed by 2030 be a middle-income country with its citizens enjoying a high quality of life. How many Kenyans are able to put food on their table even as we go for Christmas? And you want to tell us that you want to take us to Singapore. This is a dead cat strategy,” Kalonzo said.

 Kenyan leaders have long fantasised about turning the country into the “Singapore of Africa” and Ruto has now revived the slogan with missionary zeal, vowing to drag Kenya into the ranks of high-income economies and has already unveiled his strategies.

He has repeatedly cited Singapore’s discipline and efficiency, but has yet to make the pilgrimage himself.

Singapore’s founding premier, Lee Kuan Yew, built a legacy now admired across Africa, particularly in Kenya and Rwanda, two countries fond of invoking his methods.

His formula rested on three principles: effective authority, institutional continuity, and a graceful transfer of power. Kenya has struggled with all three.

Singapore dream jitters

While the Head of State banks on his administration’s mega projects, such as the Affordable Housing, critics like former Cabinet Minister Kipruto Arap Kirwa have questioned Ruto’s vision of transforming Kenya into a Singapore-like economic powerhouse.

Speaking on the night of Wednesday, December 17, 2025, during an interview with one of the local TV stations, Arap Kirwa warned that the government has lost public trust due to unfulfilled promises and shifting political narratives.

Kirwa, who once argued that he would make a difference should he become president for five months, said he remains deeply sceptical of the government’s ambitious development agenda, arguing that credibility, not vision, is now the country’s biggest challenge.

“I get worried when we are dealing with the government because we have lost a lot of trust in it. We have lost a lot of trust given the fact that they have been making so many promises and they hardly achieve any,” he said.

He suggested that Ruto’s latest push to position Kenya as Africa’s version of Singapore may be more political than practical, linking it to the president’s 2027 re-election ambitions rather than a clear, achievable economic roadmap.