President William Ruto. As a gimmick to win last year’s election, Kenya Kwanza government’s “bottom-up” development hoax worked well, but after victory, the reality has begun to sink in among the hordes that thronged the voting booths chanting sipangwingi that there never was anything like free lunch.
It is in the nature of politics for office-seekers to promise the unrealistic, make it sound reasonable, and then when in power, refuse to acknowledge responsibility for what went wrong, instead apportioning blame to scapegoats.
That seems to be what happened to the Kenya Kwanza government’s “bottom-up” development hoax conceived by a clique of political economy theorists.
The idea sounded brilliant on the campaign trail but it has proved to be quite divorced from the truth.
The situation is dire; the outlook forlorn. The future looks bleak for millions of Kenyans who are facing disaster, for great hunger looms at a time when most of them barely eke out a living scratching the earth to grow enough food to eat.
The sun has been merciless these past two months and the crops in the field have already shrivelled and died before maturity for the short rains have failed again this season. Many Kenyans who don’t live in the arid lands had no idea what scorched earth really looks like, but now they do.
