Like everything else with the two-month-old chaotic Ruto government, it started with some announcement this time by Fafi constituency M.P that they have a plan to extend Ruto’s presidency indefinitely.
”The terms of the presidency should not be limited to two terms, three terms, or even four. If the president is doing a good job he should extend his term.”
He further opined that the country cannot afford to “repeat the same mistake” as it did by having former President Mwai Kibaki leave office yet he was a progressive leader.
“We do not want to repeat the same mistakes we did during Mwai Kibaki’s time. He left office without accomplishing all his programmes because of the Constitution which allowed him to serve for only two terms,” he said.
If the Bill is passed, President William Ruto will then have an opportunity to seek re-election for more terms given that he is currently aged 55 and will have 20 years to contest for the top seat.
That means that he will be eligible to vie in 2027, 2032 and 2037.
This is delusional thinking but it is coming from politicians including Ruto himself who do not know even how the two term limit came about. They think it was some kind of a gift some god dropped on Kenyans and now they have their new god who can take all that away very quickly.
In fact the two term limit for the presidency came about because of brutal 24 years of Moi dictatorship that so many Kenyans fought hard to bring to an end. Many Kenyans including young people were killed by the Moi regime to stop the effort to end his rule. William Ruto who now wants life presidency was one of those who fought very hard and even killed people with his YK 92 terrorists to keep Moi in power forever. If Kenyans follow the logic and history of these people it is little wonder that William Ruto is determined to be Kenya’s next Moi. Good luck with that my friend.
As soon as this plan came out and the Ruto mob saw the hostility of Kenyans towards the madness that ruined their country for two and a half decades, they jumped into the media to deny any such plans. Why can’t the key beneficiary of this proposal, President Ruto himself respond to the issue?
Well, when you send your dogs hunting and they come back with rotten meat you don’t eat the dog and throw away the bad meat. You just give the meat to the dogs to eat and send them hunting again a bit stronger to chase live animals not just pick rotten dead wild animals. That is called hunting and politicians are very good at it in their field. William Ruto seems to be an expert in that business.
His political mob are very busy yapping all over the place, saying one dumb thing after another and when they are busted as fools they are the first to come back to say they were misquoted and all that stuff.
Ruto’s political hunters are making all sorts of strange announcements on there plans to do this or that and when that looks too stupid they are back denouncing their own plans. This has been the strangest way to run a country that Kenyans have seen.
Remember these two guys. They were making big announcements and now they are looking for caves big enough for them to hide under.
The Education CS who wanted to privatize our public universities is now saying he was misquoted. Dude the only way you are going to stay away from being misquoted is shutting your mouth if you don’t know what you are talking about or at least try to think before you open your mouth. That is not too hard to do like when you have to come back and cover shocking trash that you just announced on behalf of your government.
Murkomen on the other hand has come down from threats and now says they will negotiate with the KQ pilots. First of all that is the business of the CS for Labour to handle because the matter is about already signed agreements between Kenya Airways as the employer and their employees, the pilots. Ministry of transport has no role in the negotiations. You negotiate when you are signing the Collective Bargain Agreement (CBA) not after.
One thing should be clear. Kenya Airways is literally on a death bed. Any stupid moves now will send the airline to its grave in a hurry. Those pilots can get jobs from any other airline and leave the endless squabbles with KQ behind them. The question nobody in the Ruto government is asking so far is what happened to the KQ management who are responsible for the economic health and viability of Kenya Airways? Are they allowed to screw KQ to the ground while blaming the pilots and other workers who never employed them to manage the airline? Who employed these very incompetent people to run Kenya Airways?
Meanwhile Moses Kuria today announced that he is building Kenya’s cargo airport somewhere in Athi River in a piece of land that doesn’t even exist now but Kuria promised to send NYS there to expel anybody living there. That is going to be a flop.
“We want to build the cargo airport because we do not have cargo flights to transport our vegetables, avocados, and flowers to other countries. By doing so we will create thousands of jobs,” Kuria said.
This man knows nothing about how Kenya exports its products. Right now even in one of the smaller International Airports in Kenya like Kisumu there is plenty of cargo airlines. In fact in Kisumu the cargo airlines started last year and the farmers there are very busy using it to export their produce. Will they now take their produce to Athi River to the Moses Kuria International Cargo Airport? How does Kuria think Kenyans are exporting all those products now which of course they are?
Yesterday I saw Eliud Owalo, CS for Communication announcing big plans to revive Kenya Post Services. I don’t know how many millions of Kenyans are dying waiting for their mail delivery as we speak.
The communication world has completely been transformed by the technology available now for people all over the world to communicate with each other. If Kenya Post had beaten Safaricom to take the lead in the money transfer business it would be a world super power today. Now I send money to my family and call them on the cell phone and they have that money right inside their phone and can go do their business. I don’t remember the last time I sent mail to anybody in Kenya or anywhere else in the world.
It seems like everyone of the Ruto CS and other officers have to announce something everyday to look busy. It is obvious these announcements are made without the benefit of cabinet meetings and consultations to iron things out and plan the work that needs to be done and get working not talking. They don’t even seem to know that their government is dead broke right now. Ruto is begging for money everywhere and his little chaps are announcing huge money projects which nobody has even asked them to do.
The other issue which is furiously going on behind the scenes is that the Ruto government wants the MPs to grab CDF money and bypass the Supreme Court ruling which declared that CDF money is from the national government for community development and the legislators job and duty is to pass legislation and not to be running national government expenditures.
As of right now every constituency gets Shs. 133 million per year. That amounts to Shs. 2 billion for every constituency in the last 15 years of CDF existence. Can our MPs and President Ruto tell Kenyans what each constituency has achieved with that kind of money during that period of time before they make demands to grab it back?
Now the MPs want to double CDF money from 2.5 % of the national budget to 5%. Every constituency with the proposed changes will be getting more Shs. 260 million every year primarily as pocket money for every MP, their friends and families. That is why the proposals will pass in parliament because every MP is very angry and hungry now about that money and it does not matter whether they are Azimio or Kenya Kwanza MPs. On tumbo matters they have the exact some interests. If you are going to get Shs. 260 every year to eat they are voting for that and the battle goes back to the courts. We will meet them there.
The attitude of the MPs and the government is that the Supreme Court tried to mess with them by stopping them from eating CDF money and now they are going to show the Supreme Court how powerful they are and double their money line called the CDF.
The only problem so far with the MP’s plan to grab back the CDF is that the Senators are not getting as much money as they want for what they call Senate Oversight Fund (SOF). The MPs are offering them 0.001% of CDF to eat but they have refused that as too little.
If the MPs can up that 1% for them to eat the new changes will be passed in a flash and every MP and senator can eat until they choke on the CDF money. That would be a great start for the new regime. Give the MPs something to eat them the big boys can do their eating in peace in their top offices where there is more money.
Then today while in Egypt President Ruto said something that should shock every Kenyan.
Ruto, speaking to CNN in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, where he is attending the 2022 COP27, said the government had diverted money allocated for healthcare to food aid, as the country reels from the worst drought in four decades.
“We have to allocate funds meant for hospitals, drugs, and education to be able to feed the population. For the first time in the history of our nation, we have had to feed wildlife, and it is something that we have never seen. The reality of climate change is here with us,” Ruto told CNN.
Here is Mama Lucy Hospital which was in dire straits a few days ago as people were dying there for lack of equipment to be used for treatment. Does Ruto want to multiply this a couple hundred times after diverting all money from hospitals. Of all the places Ruto could take money from why choose the most vulnerable institutions like healthcare facilities where peoples’ lives are on the line.
Ruto is telling Kenyans that money allocated to protect their health in hospitals and other healthcare institutions has been grabbed by his government to feed the drought victims and wildlife. Helping people and animals dying from drought is a big part of the job of the government. Keeping Kenyans healthy and making sure that their health institutions are functioning with required financing is even a bigger job of the government.
Ruto cannot tell Kenyans that he is going to save the people starving from dying but those dying in the hospitals for lack of care because hospital money has been reallocated are on their own. I have heard about stealing from Peter to pay John but what is this new funding method of the Ruto government called?
Even worse, hospitals and healthcare are under the jurisdiction of the county governments who pay doctors, nurses and other hospital staff and buy equipment needed to keep Kenyans healthy. How did President Ruto get his fingers on healthcare money which is supposed to go to the counties?
In a few months, we are going to have strikes by doctors and nurses and patients dying for lack of care in hospitals. Will William Ruto take responsibility for that?
If you are running broke as our government is and you have to choose between eating or getting medical care, you are in a very bad shape. You are half dead as a matter of fact. How is Kenya going to get out of this?
Adongo Ogony is a Human Rights Activist and a Writer who lives in Toronto, Canada
