Economic growth and rising poverty

Opinion
Kenya Times,
17/03/07

By Ndung’u Wainaina

WHEN United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report on Human Development Index was released recently, the Government reacted angrily and dismissed the report as “inaccurate and exaggerated.”

The same lethargy to truth and hostile criticism met the Society for International Development report (2005) on the inequality within the Kenyan society.

Whether the Government accepts or not the truth remains: Over 57 per cent of Kenyans are living and trapped in a vicious cycle of abject poverty. Both reports received acclaim and resonance in our society for it is the one “wearing the shoe.” You cannot “cook figures” to distort a reality.

For that reason, the assertion by Finance Minister Amos Kimunya and his counterpart in National Development Henry Obwocha that the Government is set to release the updated report on the true picture of the poverty index is welcome but won’t change the impact and poverty situation in the country.

While the Government keeps flashing out and flagging high economic growth at 5.8 per cent, the reality is that millions of Kenyans are hitherto immeasurably poverty and a very small clique of about 10 per cent control over 42 per cent of the country’s wealth.

We are trapped in a capitalism market value system where anti-public discourse is profoundly dis-empowering.

This small filthy rich group largely benefiting from milking state enterprise strongly feels overburdened to pay tax to sustain the public sector. The contradiction in this phenomenon is that for the poor, the public sector is the only opportunity existing to access education, healthcare, security, transport among other crucial services.

In this situation, the moral imperative for development is replaced by tide of accumulation and self-enrichment. The school of thought behind this conspiracy is that government is not responsible and obliged to promote equitable development and neither is it a job creating centre.
Accordingly, it is the responsibility of the market. The Government is only there to create market and investor friendly conditions.

When government talks of investor-friendly environment it is saying access to cheap slave labour and allowing foreign investors to bring in raw materials at almost no cost which kill our own sectors of production like agriculture.

Instead of protecting and nurturing our key sectors of economy we are exposing them to unfair competition with goods that are produced at highly subsidized and protected environment.

The message that these two ministers were communicating while refuting the human development index and SID reports respectively is that “Kenyans you did great struggle but we are in power and are delivering.” What a sarcastic view!

The philosophical and ideological thinking behind this dehumanizing free capitalism market driven economy traces its history to the Sessional Paper No.10 of 1965 which President Kibaki was a principal architect.

The pillars of this paper were centralized economy, investment and allocation of resources to high potential return areas and top-down economic growth (re-distributive change).

The Structural Adjustment Programmes of 80s and 90s reinforced this capitalist economy condemning more Kenyans to poverty morass. It is the same philosophical underpinning contained in the vision 2030.

This elite based economic growth without human development denies majority access to means of production, dis-empower people and cumulatively increase inequalities.

We have to create the prerequisite legal and policy framework that enhance and add value to our informal sector which in the long run will form backbone of our industrialization and part of solution to unemployment.

The ‘Kibakinomics’ is about embedding free market economy whereby transformation of state is conceptualized in the realm of redistribution in which the capitalist market grows without control provided it reaches 10 per cent. Once there, fiscal resources shall be available for redistribution.

What a deliberate policy and an easy way of crafting a society of people who become consumers of change? Ever thought the origin and rationale of the argument that “what this country needs is a good manager?” This capitalism market driven system is glorified by those enjoying the advantage and leverage of its benefit who happen to be the 10 per cent owning the 42 per cent of the country’s wealth. We have to desist from talking about disadvantage as individual disadvantage for this means that the system is fine only that one is lacking space and advantage.

Solution is a concrete systemic transformation.

It is significant to note that the majority cluster of groups that experience this horrendous sin of impoverishment happens to be women, youth, landless and urban slum dwellers.

The same clusters form the bulky of voters who by virtual of their vulnerability become easy targets for manipulation to sell their votes and engage in electoral violence.

Poverty besides being the single biggest threat to security, human dignity, state stability and human rights, it also undermines consolidation of democracy.

Poverty and inequality has created a country that is undemocratic, unjust, condone culture of intolerance and ethinicisation.

President Kibaki and his two ministers need to realize that values of human dignity, the achievement of equality and the advancement of human rights and freedom are not privilege but entitlements to a human being.

Abject poverty happens to be source and breeding ground for crime and vicious conflicts. Government need to come to terms with one single reality that poverty does not fit in the narrow politics of politicians.

Our solution as Kenyans is not to rely on magnanimity of a person but it is to ensure we have a democratic constitution that provides for justiciable Bill of Rights acting as the cornerstone of our democracy and enshrines the values of human dignity, equality and freedom.

We have to construct a people-centred economy that values every human being on an equal basis and enjoy a life of dignity.

Our key challenge is to broadening participation in the economy, extend opportunities to all and deepen the quality of social development but not under the current economic paradigm.

* The writer is a Programme Officer, NCEC and Director, International Centre for Policy and Conflict. E-mail: wainainan@icpcafrica.org

Did Kibaki merely inherit leadership templates?

Kenya Times,
03/04/2007

Opinion

BY AKUMU KALUOCH

IT is true that Kibaki government inherited a country with negative economic growth. The country was in need of a visionary leader who could steer her to the right direction.

This responsibility fell on Kibaki’s shoulders and all those who were disillusioned by almost 40 years of KANU’s misrule came together to vote in a new beginning in December 2002. The mood was ecstatic and at his swearing in ceremony, the giddy participants could not hide their new found joy. Kibaki did not disappoint, for he promised a change. A change from the past, the past that had brought Kenya to her knees!

No sooner had the celebratory dust begun to settle than the people started to experience a sneezing episode caused by the settling dust. The sneeze has since turned in to a real medical condition because of the reasons I’ll group as the constitution, graft, integrity and the Opposition. These are the reasons why I’ll not vote for president Kibaki even though his era is so far better than that of his predecessor’s.

The long awaited new constitution was to overhaul Kenya’s past and replace it with a constitution that valued Kenyans, recognized Kenyans, and protected Kenyans regardless of their ethnic origins, socioeconomic status, and proximity to the centre of power. This was not to be. Kibaki abdicated his leadership role in constitution making to sycophants whose earlier interest in the new constitution was only to decapitate former president Moi’s powers hoping that President Moi would not accept defeat. With their man in power, the new constitution was an unnecessary burden to the Exchequer. Kibaki’s failure to enact this new people driven constitution is one of his biggest failures.

The second reason is president Kibaki’s inability to fight corruption. Soon after he came to power, traffic policemen who used to take kitu kidogo were apprehended by the public and the sign that the vice was on its way out was conspicuous. But the Anglo leasing scheme matured and obscured the vision of the fighters. The denials, accusations and counter accusations reached a deafening amplitude but all Kibaki could do was to cheer those who said that Anglo leasing was “a scandal that never was”, even though the funds were reportedly refunded from wherever.
As if this was not enough, the report of the commission set to investigate and recover some of the stolen public money by the mammoth Goldenberg rip-off that left the country bare was trashed after the commission itself took hundred of millions of shillings from the public. The surgical and radical cleanup of the judiciary headed by Justice Ringeria turned out to be more of witch hunt than a pragmatic cleanup of the judiciary system resulting in promotion and appointment of conveniently selected persons.

Then, the Artur brothers’ saga brought to glare of publicity the face of graft and incompetence within the government. Nobody is certain as to the country of origin of the Arturs, their reason for being in Kenya, and their relationship with the government’s security apparatus. A report from the commission set to unravel all this mystery is still a secret. An indictment to the government’s complicity!

My third reason for not voting president Kibaki for a second term is lack of integrity. The president and his former shadow Attorney General, Kiraitu Murungi, had proposed to the Ghai commission that ultra vires presidential powers needed to be trimmed with some powers delegated to the prime minister and the parliament. On enthronement, the power bug induced a changed course, and what was needed now was a more powerful unifying president.

He felt that intra vires powers would hamper his ability to govern effectively. In the same breath of integrity is the adoption of Moi tactics that were thought to have ceased with the end of his tenure. The same Kiraitu Murungi, asked Moi to concentrate in herding his (Moi’s) livestock and promised to show Moi how to govern. Nobody imagined that Moi’s hitherto undesirable techniques would be the template of Kibaki’s rule. Sycophancy and cronyism all rolled back to the centre of power. Favouritism became criteria for vett-

Proposed minimum reforms are hollow

Kenya Tmes,
03 April 2007

By Oduk Peter, Nairobi.

The clamour for a new Constitution by Kenyans has taken unnecessarily long. This road has been very bumpy and riddled with technical hurdles, some political others legal. Even after all these efforts, Kenyans do not have anything to show for it in terms of a new constitutional dispensation.

This year, a lot of effort seem to be focused on the General Election that is due at the end of the year. The Opposition has been lobbying for minimum reforms, a call that the Government seem to have finally accepted after the President’s speech during the opening of the sixth session of the ninth Parliament.

However, the proposed reforms are mainly aimed at levelling the political ‘playground’ to offer equal competing opportunity to all aspirants and have very little to offer towards improving the lives of the common mwananchi. I recognise that the political arena should be made fair for all.

But something is seriously amiss when reforms are not pro-common citizens.

I believe that we need a new Constitution far more than a new Government. This is because the Constitution will provide checks and balances to any Government in power. In the absence of a good Constitution, whatever Government in power is likely to become rogue.

The Opposition and other proponents of minimum reforms have threatened to boycott the elections should no minimum reforms be made. I would rather they boycott elections for comprehensive reforms, because they were elected on this platform. In the run-up to the 2002 elections, the then Opposition united under Narc party and pledged to give Kenyans a new Constitution in a hundred days. Therefore, instead of demanding minimum reforms, they should use the remaining months to elections to iron out the contentious issues in the Wako draft and deliver a better Constitution for us.

If this is not then they should call for the postponement of elections to tackle the issue of the Constitution once and for all.