That as a country we are struggling to raise money through treasury bills and bonds is now an open secret. That investors have under subscribed the 90-day, 180-day and one-year bills speaks volumes of how this government is perceived by the investment community. Are these investors seeing us go the Ghana direction and does politics have anything to do with all these. History tells us that when President Mwai Kibaki came to power he found a derelict economy that had been plundered with reckless abandon. He never complained about his predecessor, he went about his business and used the money that would have otherwise sunk through the looting holes at treasury to build a robust and vibrant economy.

Today, the biggest worry we should address ourselves to is not only the fact that there are individuals in this regime who cannot function without attacking President Uhuru Kenyatta and his regime, but the reality that these individuals will use every excuse to plunder and mess everything. Invoking President Uhuru and the handshake is just but a decoy for the ineptitude of the folks the president trust to deliver the plan.

The red flags are all over.  One of the key economic advisors to the president is shooting from the hips with tit bits of truth that certainly explains why investors are shying away from treasury bill and bonds. You see, if a top advisor of Prof David Ndii calibre talks of wastage of public funds and extravagance, there is probably more than meets the eye, it could be plunder. I mean, we pay some of these top government officials handsomely to guarantee that taxpayer’s money is spent judiciously and wastage is one of the key things they are paid to deal with, that is if they are working in the interest of Kenyans.

You see, a government might look like a bottomless cash pit for some people in power. It can float bills and bonds; it collects taxes and can easily have access to both commercial and concessional loans. Maybe a few top guys with the illusion that now they have power have this kind of mentality and think they can be “extravagant and wasteful.’’ But the reality is that a government runs like any other business entity. If you keep drawing out resources because you have sales revenues and other sources of working capital, you will soon run out of resources to sustain the running of the business and more often the red flag is when you can’t pay for expenses such as salaries. This is precisely where we have got ourselves to, and with too much focus on politics even investors are finding it hard to expect a return on investment in a government that is struggling with its routine expenses. One wonders how President Uhuru Kenyatta managed, for four years, to build the solid infrastructure that we have today, pay salaries and keep the cost of living relatively stable and low. Today, there is no money to even build roads but the roads that President Uhuru built when some of these folks were busy campaigning are the ones they now intend to toll.

In politics they say that perception is everything and there is no publicity that doesn’t add some value. What they didn’t tell us is that sometimes that value is negative and detrimental to the very politicians who welcome any publicity. UDA’s coups and high appetite to kill political parties by appropriating any other leader who was in Azimio is probably the biggest problem in their economic agenda, especially from the perception front. Most of their appointments are laced with people who until recently were not only critical of UDA and its economic plan but very categorical of how this regime was going to plunder the country. The current chief minister, before the earthquake used a water bottle to describe how plunderous bottom up was going to be. Maybe someone needs to remind the president that even Kenyans who we born when he first won the Eldoret North Parliamentary seat are now experienced and attuned to the current challenges and would add so much for both his administration and legacy than these folks who were attacking him just about eight months ago and have been there for ages.

— Hansen Owilla is a PhD candidate in political communication