Why Ruto allies are making economy gaffes

It was a bit embarrassing watching Kandara MP Alice Wahome nearly bite her tongue on national TV the other night.

Footage of the MP struggling to explain her presidential candidate William Ruto’s so-called ‘Bottom-up’ economic campaign platform during the interview provided fodder for some of the week’s pithiest social media memes.

I hope she doesn’t let this one awkward gaffe make her shy from more TV appearances in future. Ms Wahome, a lawyer by profession, is a brave and relatively eloquent debater.

But she was most probably let down by the economic think tanks the Deputy President has reportedly brought in to craft his presidential campaign strategy.

She was clearly not properly coached to talk about what is at this stage a copy-and-paste job from US President Joe Biden’s economic stimulus programme.

Not that it would be any easy for the experts.

Central Kenya politicians allied to Dr Ruto like the Kandara MP are used to the simple script of demonising President Uhuru Kenyatta over his Handshake deal with ODM party leader Raila Odinga.

Any little deviation from the anti-Handshake script and you end up with what we saw on TV.

Selling Dr Ruto as the pro-economy candidate is itself quite an ambitious project considering his casual public views on corruption. He was in 2010 sacked from the Cabinet over a public land grab case he was facing in court. He was acquitted after the prosecution failed to produce a key witness in the case to testify in court.

Land seized from an IDP

A judge at one time directed him to return land seized from an internally displaced person. For some reason, the Deputy President’s past legal troubles haven’t changed his views on corruption.

He shockingly said in a TV interview that he didn’t believe corruption was a serious leadership problem in Kenya. Last year, he sought to downplay the loss of public funds in the scandal of two dams in Elgeyo Marakwet County.

Those were quite weird views coming from a man who not only holds the second highest public office in the country but is also aspiring to be president in 2022.

They fly in the face of official and independent reports showing corruption is a major governance problem in Kenya. Citizens say corruption is denying them public services like healthcare and education.

Local and foreign investors regularly complain it is undermining ease of doing business in the country.

Multilateral creditors such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have consistently expressed concern about stalled projects, partly related to endemic corruption.

In a more self-respecting democracy, Dr Ruto would not even offer himself for election to public office given the many integrity questions he would have to answer.

Little wonder that one of the first things his economic advisers proposed for public debate was amnesty for past corruption.

[email protected]. @otienootieno