Why the Ruto administration is failing

William Ruto’s presidency is a catastrophic failure.

Nobody even needs to be convinced why. It is a failure because the country is living inside the evidence. The price of movement has become unbearable. The price of food has become dehumanising. The price of fuel has reached the national punishment stage. And when citizens finally break under the weight of this government’s choices, the state deploys force first.

This past week was a revealing moment. Fuel prices rose brutally, transport operators downed tools, commuters were stranded, roads convulsed, police clashed with citizens, four people were reported killed, dozens injured, and hundreds were arrested. 

Diesel had risen by 23.5 per cent, petrol by 8 per cent, and the government’s answer was not a sober admission that the country has been pushed too far, but the usual performance of crisis management after the damage has already landed on ordinary people. 

That is the Ruto presidency in miniature. Create pain. Deny the scale of it. Wait for people to erupt. Criminalise the eruption. Convene a meeting. Announce a temporary concession and kick the can of actually fixing the crisis down the road. Call it leadership.

Spectacular fraud

And the insult is that this is the same William Ruto who built his political brand on understanding hustlers, feeling the pain of the ordinary Kenyan, and rescuing the citizen from the old elite. What a spectacular fraud!

The man who campaigned as the voice of the struggling Kenyan now presides over a country where the struggling Kenyan wakes up to work and cannot even afford the trip. Where school fees, rent, food, transport and electricity sit on the citizen’s neck like five knees. Where the economy is explained to people as if they are too stupid to understand their own empty pockets.

State House has become a symbol of presidential appetite in a country being lectured on austerity. The parent must choose between fare and food.

The presidency discovers new uses for public money. He’s currently on a luxury trip that will cost the poor taxpayer millions of shillings on the private jet alone.

Schools are suffocating. Hospitals are straining. Businesses are collapsing under taxation and an unbelievable business economy. But the machinery around the president continues to feed, travel, host, brand, praise, defend, explain, excuse and expand.

This is why the presidency and all that surrounds, props, and supports it must be named. Because Ruto is not failing alone. He is protected by an ecosystem of professional praise-singers, opportunistic legislators, compromised institutions, policy salesmen, budget magicians, police commanders, foreign partners, tenderpreneurs, and political converts who have mistaken proximity to power for national service. Around this presidency is an entire architecture of cowardice, greed and intellectual dishonesty.

Look at the French spectacle. Kenya recently hosted a France-Africa summit with embarrassing eagerness at a time when the European country is desperately shopping for new African legitimacy after being rejected in West Africa. In Nairobi, Macron spoke of a new relationship, sovereignty, mutual respect and partnership. Yet this came around the same period Kenya and France signed a defence cooperation deal, with critics raising concern over French troops, sovereignty and prosecutorial immunity.

Cost-of-living crises

A serious presidency would understand the symbolism. A serious presidency would know that Kenya is not a stage for imperial rehabilitation. A serious presidency would not parade foreign validation while its own citizens are trapped in one of the worst cost-of-living crises of their lives. But Ruto’s presidency has become addicted to external applause. It wants global respect while losing domestic legitimacy by the day.

He has demolished public trust and the credibility of the hustler promise. He has demolished the moral authority of sacrifice. He has demolished the patience of citizens who were told pain today would mean prosperity tomorrow, only to discover that tomorrow belongs to the same people causing today’s pain.

There is no communication strategy or development tour that can fix this. No handshake, summit, slogan, opposition absorption, prayer breakfast, policy paper or televised outrage can fix it. Because the problem is not that Kenyans do not understand what Ruto is doing. The problem is that they understand it too well. They understand that power is protected while citizens are exposed, as accountability is performed. They understand that every new crisis is treated as a public relations problem until bodies, strikes, queues, fare hikes and empty sufurias force reality back into the room.

Then the system doubles down anyway.

Kenya has a presidency whose supporting apparatus has failed alongside him. This week, Interior CS Kipchumba Murkomen was quoted asking why Uhuru Kenyatta wasn’t given the same treatment as Ruto. 

Can you imagine the arrogance? This man, in all his wisdom, sat in front of cameras transmitting to the entire nation in an attempt to insinuate that your current economic suffering is somehow a political ploy. 

That’s how they think. They absolutely don’t believe your pain is real. They think if they can just summon a certain political leader to stay quiet, that your imagined pain will disappear. So yes. William Ruto is a failure and so is his presidency. His friends in government are failures the same as foreign lords pulling the strings in this regime. His sycophants are failures. I am extremely agitated in case you cannot tell. Unbelievable!

The writer is an active citizen and tech start-up owner. Email: [email protected]