A company first sets its goals and then chooses the most qualified personnel to help it achieve them. This intuitive commonsense knowledge becomes a fundamental principle of strategic economic planning in the context of government.
The goal of any government should be the transformation of society. In an underdeveloped society such as ours the task is Herculean: provision of decent education; access to health; roads and telecommunications infrastructure; technological innovation hubs; food security.
This almost impossible agenda demands the greatest level of commitment from those in government. It requires people of the highest possible integrity. Wastage of time and resources should be viewed as sabotage. Laxity, negligence or underperformance should be swiftly dealt with.
The ethos of the team tasked with driving the transformation should be what the great artist Leonardo da Vinci referred to as “stubborn application”, which is an obsessive desire to work beyond the call of duty to achieve a desired goal.
The Kenya Kwanza regime, however, seems to have adulterated the conception of government as explained above. The regime’s goal seems to be re-election in 2027.
Ministers and other key personnel are reshuffled, replaced or demoted with dizzying freneticism. Their fortunes change according to shifting political winds. With re-election as the goal, criteria for appointment are not merit and integrity.
Appointment or reshuffling is a balancing of tribe and loyalty.
Soon after the 2022 election, this column decried the resumption of campaigning by the party that had won. It was as if an election had not just been held.
The president and his deputy were once again atop their vehicles, delivering campaign-style harangues. One wondered in disgust: “Do these fellows realise that they have just won an election?”
Many hoped that the regime would soon turn off the electioneering mode and settle down to work. But what followed was an orgy of waste as officials, including the president, went on ceaseless costly foreign and domestic jaunts. Then media began to expose, almost daily, wanton plunder.
In the inaugural Nelson Mandela lecture in South Africa a few years ago, Barack Obama castigated leaders’ obsession with money. What a poverty of ambition, Obama said.
Similarly, the obsession by leaders, even those already in government, with elections is a poverty of ambition. Many countries plan twenty-five or fifty years ahead without regard to intervening elections. No wonder these countries are leapfrogging into the future while we are still stuck with 19 century problems.
The Kenya Kwanza regime is now in its third year in power. The regime is not even pretending to be working any more. It is in full campaign mode.
Little will be achieved before the elections in 2027. The regime touted a so-called “bottom up” economic model. What we got was a 2027 re-election economic model.
This model will leave us as impoverished as ever. So let’s forget economic progress. Our hope now is for cessation of war drums being beaten by regime sycophants.
Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political and social commentator.
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