Can Politicians Fighting for Who Will be President in 2032 Fix the Economy Right Now?

Gachagua Denies Uniting Mt Kenya On Tribal Lines – We Just Want A Fair Share Of National Resources

The Deputy President, who has faced criticism from a section of politicians for his unity efforts, challenged his opponents to hold meetings in the region and gauge the support for themselves.

 Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua has refuted claims that his efforts to unite the Mt Kenya region are based on tribal lines, insisting that his goal is to secure the region’s fair share of national resources.

Speaking at the Gikondi home of the late former Mukurweini MP Antony Kia on Tuesday, where he was consoling the family, Gachagua clarified that his unity call aims to ensure the region’s rightful relevance at the national level.

“Many are saying that my unity call is based on tribal lines, but that is not the case. We want to make sure that our fair share of the national cake is realized.

In the past, this region has suffered due to divisions, and we do not want to repeat the same mistakes. That is why we must unite,” Gachagua stated amid attacks from leaders, mainly from Rift Valley who accuse him of spreading tribalism.

One of the strangest and practically totally foolish idea is when you hear politicians talking about who is going to be the president in 2032. If anybody asked dictator Daniel Arap Moi in 1992 after he won multiparty elections who will be the president in 2002, he would have laughed his head off and told them that is for him to decide at that time.

Moi tried with Uhuru Kenyatta and Ruto in 2002 as his big KANU boys to beat Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga’s ODM in a coalition with Kijana Wamalwa in FORD Kenya and failed miserably as Kibaki won the presidency while in a hospital in the UK after serious car accident injuries that happened during the campaign to throw out Moi from office. That is politics in real life. It is completely unpredictable.

We are looking at Kenyan politics exactly 20 years ago when some politicians thought they had everything fixed and KANU was going to be in power forever. Didn’t work very well for them but it worked great for the country.

Raila Odinga championed the remainder of the presidential campaign and on December 27, 2002 they won the election with a resounding 62 per cent of the votes.

We kept off Uhuru Park and let Moi go alone- Mudavadi

Former vice president Musalia Mudavadi and other top Kanu politicians watched President Mwai Kibaki’s 2002 swearing-in on TV because they were afraid of being humiliated at Uhuru Park.

After the swearing in very strange things happened in the country. Mwai Kibaki was very focused on economic reforms and development and he was right on it from the start. Kibaki reorganized key ministries including the agriculture and that work was given to Raila Odinga.

Kibaki established the Kenya National Commission for Human Rights (KNCHR) and Kenyan human rights activists were involved in that process including Dr. Willy Mutunga who later became the Chief Justice in Kenya in 2011. Maina Kiai who was in charge of KNCHR and the group involved Kenya human rights activists from all walks and it was a good process and they were ready to work and their main focus was on how to get a new constitution for Kenya which was then going on under the Bomas Constitutional process. Those were important strides for human rights and democracy in Kenya.

Thirty Years of Anti-Corruption: A Personal Reflection

Corruption, however, you define it, is so integral to the way human commercial and political affairs play out that geopolitical shifts have driven all major global developments in its regard. This is as true now as it has been for the almost thirty years that I have been working in the anticorruption field, motivated by the realization that corruption could not be treated as peripheral to the question of development.

In both cases of President tried to clean our country through the Bomas process for constitutional reforms, bringing in Dr. Willy Mutunga to handle the human rights issues in the country and then having John Githongo to deal with heavy-weight corruption in Kenyan starting with the Goldenberg multi billion theft of public money in Kenya, Kibaki destroyed all those institutions when they were not seen to be working in his interests and those of his political base.

After things settled down for President Kibaki in 2003 and he was in full control everything went crazy. I was in Kenya to attend to Bomas constitutional conference which was supposed to finalize the whole documents which has been debated by so many groups and teams all over the country everything went really bad.

The Kibaki Kikuyu team became very hostile to the whole new constitution idea. I was shocked in there because I know a lot of those politicians and had worked with them. My best friend in Kibaki camp was Koigi wa Wamwere, a Kenyan exile himself during the Moi regime who had been very helpful to Kenyan students who were refugees in Tanzania and that included me from 1988.

Koigi was in exile in Norway at the time but he would come to Tanzania all the time to see us and find out how we lived. It was a big concern to him that we have enough food and places to stay. So Koigi was actually buying food for Kenyan refugees like me and others in Tanzania and then he goes and comes back. In Kenya everybody knew that it was Koigi who Moi would never shake up so he just kept arresting and detaining him. Koigi was a big figure and politician in the Kenyan struggle for a democratic katiba.

When he was detained Koigi wa Wamwere was denied combs, neither was he shaved When the government back then realised his dreadlocks were gaining attention they decided to shave him. He however refused and successfully moved to court

I was doing some media work for HAKI, a human rights publication that we set up in Toronto Canada, and part of my job at the Bomas conference was to do interviews at Bomas for the quarterly magazine which Koigi himself knew very well and liked as we circulated copies in Kenya.

So we had a chance to sit down with my good friend Koigi wa Wamwere and talk about the new katiba. The words that came out of Koigi’s mouth could make you throw up if you had known the kind of person and fighter he was when we were facing the Moi dictatorship.

Koigi told us point blank that now that they had a “Kikuyu Presidency” under Mwai Kibaki the idea of having a new constitution where executive powers to run the republic will be split between a President and a Prime Minister was no longer worth it and must be abandoned completely. Koigi promised us they were going to fight against the Bomas katiba with all the power they have including President Kibaki himself and that new constitution Kenyans had fought and so many died for was now dead itself. In Koigi’s world at that time, they had their Kibaki and the katiba was useless to them.

The other strange thing going on was that Martha Karua who was a big part in the war for a new katiba during the fights against the Moi regime was Kibaki Minister for Justice replacing Kiraitu Murungi in 2005 and she was making it very clear to Kenyans that the Bomas katiba campaigns are over because Kibaki was the president.

Karua quickly became known as ‘Iron Lady’ due to her unflinching and unwavering defence of Kibaki’s administration, and when the going got really tough, she was referred to as “the only man in Kibaki’s Cabinet”.

In 2005, Karua was named Minister for Justice, Constitutional Affairs and National Cohesion, replacing Kiraitu Murungi. In her new portfolio, she oversaw key legislations that put Kenya on the path to strengthening electoral and national reconciliation processes, and a constitutional review.

The Bomas delegates held a vote to decide whether the new katiba will have an executive President as well as Prime Minister. Despite a vigorous campaign by the Kibaki mob at Bomas the delegates voted to include an executive Prime Minister in the katiba and the full package on human rights, democratic parliament, women representation, stopping land grabbers through the National Land Commission and a whole lot of things Kenyans had wanted during years of consultations were passed and the new katiba was ready to go to the referendum.

On August 23, 2003 just when we were rounding up the Bomas katiba the news broke out that the then Vice President Kijana Wamalwa had passed away in London. It was a moment of total chaos at the Bomas conference but the delegates came together concluded the whole package of a new constitution to be passed to President Mwai Kibaki.

President and his Mt. Kenya team was completely opposed to the Bomas Draft constitution so Kibaki and his team came with their own trick by setting up what they called the Naivasha Retreat to come with the final draft to be taken to the referendum.

President Kibaki, Martha Karua, Kiraitu Murungi and others who wanted president Kibaki to have all the powers that dictator Moi had decided to invite big time KANU leaders to the Naivasha meetings and William Ruto was a big part of that and he agreed to work with Kibaki and his team to kill the Bomas Draft constitution and that is exactly what they did. That is how Kenya ended up with the failed 2005 Kibaki katiba losing at the referendum.

The Naivasha group then drafted their own constitution which had nothing to with what was decided and voted on at the Bomas conference. The cornerstone of the new Kibaki katiba was to maintain the imperial presidency in Kenya. Raila Odinga and his ODM party opposed the Kibaki constitution because it was robbing Kenyans of what they had agreed on and maintaining a presidential dictatorship in place.

The Kibaki katiba was then taken to the referendum in 2005 and one very strange thing was that William Ruto who had been supportive of the Kibaki team in Naivasha changed course and agreed with the ODM that this new Kibaki katiba was just too fake and there was no window left for Kibaki and his tribalist team to pass their intended katiba. In fact the entire KANU opposition party including Uhuru Kenyatta were on the “NO” side opposing Kibaki’s constitution.

I remember at the beginning of the referendum campaign Kiraitu Murungi yelling that they are going to shake every tree to make sure the Kibaki katiba is passed at the referendum. Then Raila said they will be under every one of those trees when Kibaki people get there. I laughed my head off just how funny the whole thing was. Kibaki was losing the referendum by miles. He knew it.

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Kenyans reject proposed constitution

Kenyans rejected a proposed constitution supported by their president, electoral officials said Tuesday.

Kenyans line up to vote for a referendum in Nairobi, Kenya, on Monday.

Kenyans rejected a draft constitution supported by their president.

Six of Kenya’s eight provinces rejected the constitution, according to partial figures released by electoral officials, and opponents of the proposed charter began celebrating in the streets of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.

How 2005 referendum divided a feeble nation

In the run up to the 2005 referendum, signs that Kenya was hurtling down a dangerous path of ethnic divisions were clear.

Campaigns leading to the vote were laced with poisonous rhetoric from the two opposing sides, leaving no doubt that the contest, once over, would leave the country more divided than ever.

ELECTION VIOLENCE

After the failed Kibaki katiba, Kenya went to the 2007 General Elections in a very tense situation and tribalism boiling in every aspect of Kenya politics.

At the polls, opposition leader Raila Odinga was ahead by several hundred thousand votes when the electoral commission abruptly stopped announcing the results and ejected journalists. Hours later, the commission announced Kibaki had won by a narrow margin and he was hurriedly sworn in literally at night.

Most election observers said the elections were flawed. Odinga called for protests, sparking a deadly police crackdown. Ethnic violence flared in Nairobi’s slums, the Rift Valley highlands and the lakeside city of Kisumu. Families were burned alive in a church.

Even before the 2007 elections the tribal threats from Kibaki ministers and state officials including police bosses was unprecedented. And when the elections came and Kibaki was losing at the polls Kenya ended up with the worst violence and tribal genocide our country ever saw since independence.

More than 1,000 people were killed and almost 700,000 displaced in violence after the 2007 election. Kenyans know exactly where tribal politics has led them and it has been a tragedy all the time. Kenyans are are now telling politicians they can keep their tribes and let Kenyans keep their country as a nation of diverse people who want a prosperous country for all. What can possibly be wrong with that.

After the horrific mass massacres mostly by Kenya police and GSU after the 2007/8 election flop by Kibaki, Kenya finally had a genuine constitution vote in 2010 and that is how our country got its current constitution which every government since then has abused vigorously. Kenyans will deal with that and in fact they already are making moves to sort out the situation. The nation will handle that as they have for decades in the life of our country.

Former U.N. chief Kofi Annan finally brokered a peace deal between Kibaki and Odinga. The two formed a grand coalition government, with Odinga as prime minister.

That is the history of Kenya politics as we know it so when we see intense fighting within KK so called Kingpins trying this or that tribe as try to tell Kenyans who will run and win the presidential elections in 2032 it is just a sad joke and yet they are so intensely engaged in that useless effort instead of dealing with the real problems Kenya face today like the notorious 2024 Financial Budget now in parliament which will affect the life of every Kenyan big time.

Our politicians do not even bother to read the budget and are just waiting to vote for it according to what President Ruto tells them. Nobody even knows who will win the presidency in 2027 and some are already obsessing about 2032. Please stop wasting your time and focus on what Kenyans need now.

President Ruto may not admit it but Mutahi Ngunyi speaks very well for him and his 2024 budget.

“Tax on BREAD is downright WRONG. It is a SIN. But THINK about it! How many families eat BREAD in Kenya? 20 million Village Kids eat ‘left-over’ UGALI and porridge for breakfast. Check the UNDP Index on poverty. If Tax on BREAD is a SIN, why? It affects the middle class. RIGHT?

Dear Hustlers: What is your PROBLEM? Only 1.2 million Kenyans out of 52 million OWN cars.40 Million of YOU will NEVER own a car. Question: Why defend Car Owners if you have No Car? Also: Do Hustlers drink BOTTLED WATER or use Tea bags? NO! Ruto is TAXING the RICH. Is this WRONG?”

Ngunyi does not understand that the reason many Kenyans don’t eat bread is because they cannot afford it. Ruto putting more tax on bread means they will never afford it and many more will join the list. Same thing with taxing cars.

Every Kenyan buys food from groceries and all that food is transported there by vehicles and that 2.5% increase is going directly to those buying food transported to the stores. Also every Kenyan uses public transport and the fare for that travelling is going up by 2.5%.

It is Okay for a guy like Mutahi Ngunyi a good thinker in fancy clothing who is now reduced to trash politics in twitter not to understand what is good for the country. How about President William Ruto? That is the question Kenyans must ask and seek answers to from President William Ruto right now.

Raila Rejects Finance Bill 2024 In Totality, Warns Economy May Collapse

The Azimio la Umoja One Kenya coalition party leader Raila Odinga has slammed the government over the proposals contained in Finance Bill, 2024.

In a statement on Friday June 7 2024, Mr. Odinga declared that the Kwanza regime Finance Bill 2024 is retrogressive and insensitive to the plight of the poor in the country, reiterating that its impacts will be worse than Finance Bill, 2023.

The opposition leader cited the economic areas which would be affected by the proposed increase of taxes and Value Added Tax (VAT) saying ordinary Kenyans will be subjected to hardships worse than in the last financial year.

“The Bill is a regressive taxation proposal that goes ruthlessly after the poor. Should it be ratified, low-income people will be hit with taxes on multiple fronts and will end up paying more than people with higher incomes. It is obvious that tax on basic necessities such as food, cooking oil and money transfer disproportionately hurt the poorest of the poor,” he said.

“The tax burden in Kenya is at its highest level since independence, but public services have largely remained on their knees. As if this is not bad enough the Finance Bill 2024 proposes even more and higher taxes. Consequently, the people and the country will be way worse off at this time in 2025 if the Finance Bill 2024 does not undergo a radical surgery. Most of the tax proposals in the Finance Bill 2024 are as insensitive as they are callous.”

Mr. Odinga highlighted the new taxes imposed on basic commodities such as bread, edible oil, mobile banking transactions and sugarcane factories reaffirming that the same would subject Kenyans who are already hurting economically to more pain.

He also touched on the negative impact of the eco levy which is proposed to be imposed on manufactured products such as diapers, the 2.5 per cent tax on motor vehicles and new taxes on insurance and reinsurance services.

“The government is trying to make it more costly for people to send and receive money by phone and at the same time trying to kill remittances from the diaspora…When the government imposes a 25 per cent excise duty on edible oil as is being proposed in the Finance Bill 2024, the cost of cooked food, including those served in kibandas and kiosks that are the refuge of millions of casual workers will rise,” he stated.

“We see no positive result that the country which is a net importer of nearly everything can derive from the proposal to raise import declaration fees from 2 percent to 3 percent. The impact is that the cost of goods will go up

He also listed the proposed 16 percent VAT on foreign exchange transactions, 16 percent tax on bread, and 25 percent Excise duty on edible oil.

Other taxes Raila wants reviewed are the proposed 16 percent on sugarcane transportation and Import Declaration fees which the Bill proposes to raise from the current 2 percent to 3 percent.

Raila also listed the Eco Levy which will see items such as diapers and mobile phones being taxed and the introduction of a 16 per cent VAT on insurance and reinsurance services.

The Azimio boss also chided the government for intending to introduce a 2.5 per cent Motor Vehicle Tax saying it will amount to double taxation since car owners are already being taxed on a number of fronts.  

“It must be remembered that the tax measures put in place last year and which led to violent protests have subjected Kenyans to a great deal of trauma but bore no fruit. They led to closure and relocation of businesses,” Raila said.

Raila warned that should the Finance Bill be passed in its current state, the move could result in the collapse of an economy that is already on the brink “and the poor will be the hardest hit”.

Raila’s position reflects what the Law Society of Kenya has also raised about the Finance Bill 2024.

LSK President Faith Odhiambo.

Finance Bill 2024 Will Inflict More Pain On Low-Income Households – LSK

The Law Society of Kenya (LSK) has told members of the National Assembly Finance and Planning Committee that the Finance Bill 2024 will inflict more pain on low-income households that form the majority of Kenya’s taxpayers.

“Standard rating bread will increase its cost. Given the regressive nature of VAT, this change will disproportionately affect lower income households,” noted LSK.

The Bill has proposed to increase excise duty rates from 15% to 20%. This will apply on telephone and internet data services, fees charged for money transfer services by banks, money transfer agencies and other financial service providers and Fees charged for money transfer services by cellular phone service providers and payment service providers licensed under the National Payment System Act, 2011.

LSK told MPs that considering the crucial roles that internet data, telephone services, and mobile money transfers play in business operations, this proposed amendment is expected to negatively impact the overall cost of doing business in Kenya.

The lawyers’ body added that small business enterprises, which rely heavily on phone-based transactions and communications, will be particularly affected, potentially facing increased operational expenses and financial challenges.

The Finance Bill, 2024, aims to expand the tax base and increase revenue collection from Kenyan citizens through a raft of new tax measures.

“The Bill proposes to increase the excise duty rates applicable to telephone and internet data services, as well as money transfer services, from 15 per cent to 20 per cent. Notably, the Finance Act 2023 had previously reduced the excise duty on telephone and internet data services from 20 per cent to 15 per cent.” 

The LSK boss added that the Bill has proposed removal of various tax reliefs put in place by the Finance Act 2023 in relation to electric vehicles, motorcycles, buses and bicycles.

Odhiambo regretted that the Bill further introduces various provisions that will increase the cost of living for many Kenyans.“The various proposals in the Bill will make life more expensive for a significant portion of the population, adding financial strain to already burdened households,” she pointed out.

“Once again, this proposal will have the effect of increasing the cost of living and will push many Kenyans to a cash-based economy,” she said.

Has anybody heard even a single Kenyan M.P or senator say a single word about the Finance Bill 2024? None of them even reads it and they have no idea what is in there and would care less. The MPs and senators are there for their own money and wealth that they get personally and nothing else. They are just waiting for the suffering Kenyans to vote for them again in 2027 and 2032.

Meanwhile senator Okiya Omtatah is talking to the republic on very serious issues happening today in our country and his focus is on Finance Bill 2024 which is now before the MPs in Parliament. Can our politicians go through that budget and explain to Kenyans what is in there for their benefit as ordinary workers, farmers and business people. That is what Kenyans want to hear about now and those of them who are alive in 2032 will decide who to vote for to be their president.

President Ruto May Be Jailed In Future For What He’s Doing Today – Omtatah

And Okiya Omtatah is warning President William Ruto that he may face jail time in future and he points out specific items of massive theft planted in the 2024 Finance Bill as we speak.

Busia Senator Okiya Omtatah speaks on Citizen TV’s ‘The Big Conversation’ show on June 5, 2024.

Busia Senator Okiya Omtatah has cautioned President William Ruto to be wary of how he runs the country lest he finds himself on the wrong side of the law after the conclusion of his term.

Omtatah, who spoke on Citizen TV’s ‘The Big Conversation’ show on Wednesday night, warned the President to desist from attempting to implement policies that are contrary to the Constitution.

According to the lawmaker, the Head of State’s persistent ignorance of the country’s guiding legal document in the execution of government affairs may eventually serve to put him behind bars when he leaves power.

He went ahead to advise President Ruto to consider the number of ex-presidents jailed in South Korea, where he presently is on an official visit, due to what he termed as going “rogue” during their time in office.

“We have a Constitution in this country, and within that Constitution there are measures to punish these people (the government). There’s going to come a time when we shall put them in jail for what they’e doing today,” said Omtatah.

“President Ruto is in South Korea, let him ask himself how many former presidents of South Korea have gone to jail. As he wants to admire South Korea, he must also know there’s a side where rogue presidents are jailed and punished. So does President Ruto want to be jailed when he leaves office? That’s the question he should ask himself. He must obey the Constitution, there’s no way out.”

Senator Omtatah went on to term the ongoing Finance Bill, 2024 debate as a diversionary tactic by the government to prevent Kenyans from focusing on the alleged looting going on and hidden in the budget.

According to Omtatah, Kenyans should at the moment treat the Finance Bill as a dangerous issue, and also direct their attention to what he termed as the “budget corruption” that is going to cost the country nearly Ksh.100 billion.

“In discussing this (Finance) Bill, I would like everybody to go to the website of the Treasury, you’ll find five books there that contain budget estimates of the current government, that we’re supposed to be discussing but instead we’re being taken the wrong way to discuss the Finance Bill which is premature; you cannot have a Finance Bill without a budget you want to finance,” he noted.

“It is about 4,500 pages, I’ve read through all of them, and on my first reading, I’ve identified about Ksh.100 billion that is being stolen in two items. One of them is on the repayment of debt, there’s about Ksh.40 billion there that you cannot explain, double repayment.”

He added: “When you come down, there are other things they call ‘other expenses.’ The law requires that every item that are going to be identified. So you cannot have ‘other expenses,’ you must tell us this Ksh.10 is going to buy a glass. So ‘other expenses’ is what we call budgeted corruption. And that ‘other expenses’ has been allocated Ksh.52 billion…that’s a total of Ksh.92 billion.”

Adongo Ogony is a Human Rights Activist and a Writer who lives in Toronto, Canada