Will the Budget be Idi Amin’s Time for William Ruto or Will the Constitution and the Kenyan People Prevail?

12 mins read

“We all agree as leaders that there is a problem of unemployment among the youth in the country, six million are unemployed, and 800,000 join the job market annually. We spend millions of shillings educating them, and it is time to plan for them to join the labour market.”

“It will be foolhardy for us not to put in place a deliberate, comprehensive, practical plan to tap on their skills after leaving school.”

Turning to attack the media for reporting what Kenyans are saying about the Ruto dreadful Finance and Tax budget for 2023, DP Gachagua issued his usual useless threats which nobody pays attention to but he turned to the new con job by Ruto on the Housing Tax. They want to pretend now that the whole plan is to create jobs for Kenyan youth.

“Nyinyi watu wa media mtakatwa, si mko na mishahara. It is only 2,500. Hata mkiendelea kupinga mtakatwa. Kwa sababu hawa watoto wetu lazima wapate kibarua. (You journalists will have the 3 percent on house levy deducted from your dues. You have a salary. It is only Sh2,500. Even if you continue opposing the proposed bill through the media. The youth must get employment),” he stated.

The Ruto Housing Fund which has gone off the wall and galvanized the opposition to the entire budget which includes increasing VAT on fuel and other products was actually started as a small item in the budget which Ruto did not even expect Kenyans to notice.

The Housing Fund was going to be free money for Ruto to collect every month hoping to build houses some 60 years from now but having free money right away which would amount to hundreds of millions for him every month.

Now that the opposition to the Housing Fund has gone through the roof, Ruto and his little busybodies are telling Kenyans that the Housing Fund will create millions of jobs for Kenyans. That is absolute nonsense.

What jobs will the Housing Fund create even if they were to start building some three houses next month? Kenyans will be working as brick layers?

How many millions of bricklayers will Ruto need for his imaginary buildings? What other jobs are there? Housing design workers? How many thousands of Kenyan youth are housing design workers? Oh, maybe doing plastering work?

The simple fact is that even if there were any buildings being done, the money goes to the construction companies who decide what to do. Ruto has no powers to tell construction workers what to do and how many youth to employ.

This is planned to be the same scam as what happened with Kimwarer and Arror dams which today lie abandoned after billions meant for the dams have been stolen.

Look at the Kimwarer dams and other big constructions.

This was a case where the government already had hundreds of billions of borrowed money, they had the dams designed and ready to go.

How many thousands of Kenyan youth did the government get employed to build the dams? Zero. Why. Because the same government stole all the billions, the dams got stuck in the wilderness and Kenyans tax payers are now paying back those billions with nothing to get from it. Who were those people who stole the dam money?

Treasury CS Henry Rotich and PS Kamau Thugge in Court for theft of Kimwarer and Arror dam money.

The thieves were led by Ruto’s friends he got appointed to run their government and the engineer in chief of that was Henry Rotich Treasury CS and his buddy Kamau Thugge Treasury PS. As of now, Kamau who got fired has already been brought back to run the finances of the Ruto government. He is back at the Treasury working for Ruto. Henry Rotich could very well be on his way back. He could be a perfect Ruto man to run the Housing Fund.

The real story here is that Ruto is in a fix with the Housing Fund one way or the other. If the fund is rejected or even ruled illegal by the courts his whole budget is in chaos and he faces a disaster now. If, God forbid, the budget goes through and the Housing Fund is passed, Ruto will be in a bigger nightmare come 2027. Ruto has to choose his poison now.

Ruto and his cronies are telling Kenyans that the fund will create millions of jobs, so come 2027, Kenyans will be asking him where the millions of jobs are and there will be nothing for Ruto to show. That will kill him politically.

Ruto and the Budget bullies are also saying the Housing Fund will eliminate slums in our urban centers. That is pure fiction and a dangerous dream that will be a real nightmare for Ruto after he gets the Housing Fund.

Kenyans will expect the slums to be gone by 2017 after Ruto gets his money to get rid of them. Will Ruto really eliminate the slums where the majority of Kenyan residents live in the towns? You can forget about that right now.

Will Ruto really eliminate the slums where the majority of Kenyan residents live in the towns?

Instead, Kenya will have even more slums than they have now. Kenyans will ask Ruto in 2027 why they still have slums after he got his Housing Fund to eliminate them. Ruto will tell them to give him five more years and all the slums will be gone. Nobody is going to buy that and that is just the end of the road for him.

So Ruto should be holding prayers at State House every day hoping that the Housing Fund never gets anywhere so he can continue to blame the slums and youth unemployment on those who opposed his Housing Fund. Ruto needs to send a private note of thanks to Okiya Omtatah and beg him to get the court to particularly kill the Housing Fund.

Instead, he is getting into a lot of fights with Kenya’s civil society with his senseless and dictatorial mentality towards Kenyans who oppose his Idi Amin attitude towards governance.

/Suba Churchill

Today political activist Suba Churchill has termed as quite unfortunate statements by President William Ruto that he is waiting to see any MP who will reject the 3 per cent Housing Levy contained in the Finance Bill.

Churchill who is also the Kenya National Civil Society Centre executive director claimed the directive means that legislators especially those allied to Kenya Kwanza must ensure that the bill sails through irrespective of what the electorate thinks.

“President William Ruto promised to respect institutions when he was campaigning ahead of last year’s general election and Parliament is one of those constitutional institutions that he promised to allow it carry out its mandate independently,” he said in an interview with the Star.

“So for him to give such ultimatums is in a view a form of dictatorship.”

“The National Assembly and the Senate have no chance whatsoever of exercising independence and authority because both of them are led by allies of President Ruto and therefore they insist on pushing for his agenda,” Churchill claimed.

ELOG national coordinator Mulle Musau

ELOG national coordinator Mulle Musau said Parliament is an independent arm of government and should not be directed on how to operate.

“MPs are representatives of the people. The views of those they represent should come first during any deliberations in Parliament, their political party’s interests come second,” Musau said.

The bigger deal with the Ruto budget is that even as Kenyans are focused on the Housing Fund, there are more deadly plans in the budget to destroy the lives of millions of Kenyans. The worst thing in that budget is to increase VAT on almost everything including fuel by 8%. Increasing the price of fuel will increase the price of every single commodity in Kenya including all food products.

Fuel is what is used to manufacture everything including the food Kenyans eat. Fuel is also used to transport every product from the factories or farms to the market. An 8% increase in the fuel price will increase the prices in all those products by more than 8 % because there are multiple levels fuel is used to get the products produced and delivered to the buyers.

The prices of products like these that Kenyans use every day are going up by 8% – 16% depending on fuel costs for production and transportation to the markets and the consumers.

Ruto is lucky that right now the emphasis of the outrage on his budget seems to be limited to the Housing Fund. After the budget, there is going to be a mass uprising as the price of everything shoots through the roof.

That is when Ruto will be looking for a place to hide from Kenyans instead of threatening them every day. That is what is coming for Ruto if he sneaks his outrageous budget through by bullying the MPs.

Okiya Omtatah may be Ruto’s last hope to survive after this terrible budget which Ruto and his cronies never even thought through before throwing it at Kenyans. Other than yelling, thinking through things may be a bigger asset to politicians and Ruto has no clue about that as Kenyans are seeing.

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

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

Previous Story

Infinix NOTE 30 Series Launched in Kenya

Next Story

Busia Senator: Kenya Has Settled All Its Debts

Latest from Blog