Kenya has been treated to high-octane politics in the past two months, as it experienced the first-ever impeachment of a Deputy President.
Rigathi Gachagua’s removal paralysed the government and the two Houses of Parliament, and captured the entire Judiciary.
Nothing has been going on beyond this circus. It has created huge uncertainty and anxiety, domestically and internationally. The tour de force of this impeachment was the end game – the swearing-in of a new Deputy President, Kithure Kindiki.
Preceding the impeachment were the anti-tax protests. For two months, nothing was happening in the country apart from the protests. They created a highly charged political environment. The battlefield was on the streets and in the courts.
Political activists and lawyers had a field day. The government’s relations with long established allies was severely tested, and people were killed and others abducted. The bottom line was that the government did precious little work during that period.
As a direct consequence of those protests, the government had an entire Cabinet sacked, and a new one unveiled, vetted and sworn in. Dovetailing on this development was the entry of the opposition into government. The opposition ODM had four of its members joining the government in critical Cabinet positions, another development that kept the political pot in Kenya churning. In other words, it’s just drama after drama!
The government has been embroiled in court battles over its signature projects, which have stalled or any progress was neutered. The 2023 Finance Act had been in the courts for months. After initially being declared unconstitutional by the courts, it was rescued by the Supreme Court, giving the government a reprieve. It has been using that Act to collect taxes after it was forced to withdraw the Finance Bill 2024 due to protests.
In the meantime, government programmes continue to face headwinds. The rollout of the Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF) that has replaced NHIF has been tumultuous. The ambitious goals of SHIF have been delayed due to court challenges.
And when the rollout was allowed by the courts, a distracted government really botched this one. The sheer chaos of the rollout is emblematic of a government that has been unable to settle down and put its whole weight behind working for the people.
There is zero movement on economic recovery. There is zero movement on injecting cashflows into the economy. There is zero movement on pending bills. The electoral agency IEBC remains in limbo with no commissioners, even as critical deadlines for redrawing constituency boundaries lapse. There are zero project rollouts!
The government’s in-tray remains overflowing, with precious little reaching the out-tray.
Just last year, the government was distracted by another round of demonstrations over a raft of demands issued by opposition doyen Raila Odinga. It lost precious time and energy battling this round of protests. It largely lost 2023, and is about to lose 2024.
The problem is not that the government is facing a crises. Crises are par for the course for governments the world over. The anxiety among Kenyans is that the government is already well into its third year, and all they see is crisis after crisis with no end in sight.
In Kenya, the last year of a government’s tenure is usually lost as electioneering becomes the main focus. The government becomes completely distracted in its usually desperate attempts to get re-elected. This means that President William Ruto’s government now has just another two years to make any meaningful impact on the lives of Kenyans.
President Ruto is reputedly a good organiser. But so far, Kenyans have seen precious little of that organisational acumen when it comes to creating a machine to deliver for the people. Kenyans are now really anxious about when, if ever, the government will settle down to work for them.
