If I were on talking terms with Finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta, here is what I’d say to him: My brother, Africans have a saying that a woman who wants children does not sleep in her clothes. She does not shrink from the hairy animal snoring next to her.
On the contrary, she positively invites its attentions. Even the road to heaven is not paved in mink, it passes through a somewhat difficult place -- death. It’s a politically clever budget that makes everyone happy (with the exception of ministerial mistresses, newspapers, stockbrokers and scrap metal dealers).
It wants to achieve growth, spends a whole load of money but gives tax breaks to nearly every breathing thing. (It goes after the unpopular largesse and waste of government fatcats, particularly their limousines and endless junkets, but in this case, the proof of the pudding is in the eating).
It also gives a friendly nod to majimbo, sending money to the villages where, no doubt, the chief, the headman and the local wise men will be waiting. I remember once visiting Mathira in Nyeri and seeing what the villagers had done with their CDF and coming away thinking: We have cracked it, we have found the elixir of development. Then I visited my own constituency and sobered up.
It’s not a Narc budget (tough, soaked in the disdainful arrogance of accountants with skeletons of Anglo Leasing buried in it); it’s more of an ODM socialistic humbug budget (prices are coming down, nobody pays for anything (not even rent), we are all equal so let’s have a rally in party colours and blame Mt Kenya Mafia for the drought in North Korea).
It’s a fairy tale budget for a fairy tale country; the mission is clear in the dashing hero’s mind – to rescue Cinderella from the clutches of the evil stepmother. But there is no evidence of the balls to put up with the pain of the journey. Lots of gain, zero pain.
Smokers are wheezing in delight, and drunkards are toasting into the wee hours, for this is the first year in recent memory when sinners have not been punished. Even adulterers, fornicators and latter-day Casanovas are winking with glee at all that beauty now that the price of powder will be coming down.
Do I blame Mr Kenyatta for writing a feel-good budget? Alas, not at all. Nigerians have a saying that a man who touches the bottom of a soup plate with a ball of foo foo is no longer searching for soup. I can’t blame Mr Kenyatta for touching the bottom of the soup plate when others like Ms Martha Karua, who are already campaigning, have poured out the soup to better expose the chunks of meat down there.
My concern is whether we still have the capacity to make tough choices, whether we still have the character to invest in pain for the prospect of gain. My own view is pessimistic. We are, as one guy put it, away with the fairies, living in a dream world where values float in the air, often changing shape and meaning, where the truth is false, and lies are true; depending, of course, on your tribe.
Many’s the time I have watched in disbelief as an established thief projects himself as a champion of the masses, a killer with red hands talks eloquently about human rights and an arsonist, with fresh soot in his nostrils, talks about the pain of the so-called IDPs. A civil servant inserts errors in the budget, but rather than having him tried and shot, we accuse his minister of incompetence.
A man recently told me the story of a West African dictator who came to power, lined up the ruling elite on stakes on a beach and shot them. For many years, that country’s capital city had open sewers and no roads, though residents faithfully paid taxes. The dictator looked at the taxes and what it would cost to transform the city and was greatly angered.
Then he summoned the city fathers for a friendly chat during which he said that if, by the end of the year, the city did not have modern infrastructure, he would string them up on stakes and shoot them. The city fathers believed him for, in their vigor to fulfill his wishes, some are said to have sold their own property to raise the money. Today, the city is one of the most orderly and cleanest in Africa.
Since I was a boy, we have been having arguments about reforms, particularly to our imperial presidency. The focus of reforms has been to remove the excess powers of the president and vest them in other institutions. Now what I am hearing is the desire to transfer all of the powers of the president to an unelected prime minister.
The prime minister will apparently be picked by our MPs, about whose corruption a lot has been written in recent times. The worst and most dangerous thing you can do in a Third World country is to make it easy to remove the ruler.
You will say you want to make it easy to kick out the non-performers, the corrupt, the tribalists and so on, but he will be removed for the simple reason that someone else wants the power. The more I think about it, the more I realize how exceptional it was for retired President Moi, a dictator, to hand over power to the opposition in a smooth and peaceful transition.
There is many a democrat who may have serious problems following that example. Everywhere you look, there are reasons to despair, so maybe Mr Kenyatta was right in giving Kenyans a fairy tale budget. As for his fellow politicians, I know they don’t listen. They think they can fool us all the time with their endless tricks.
Me, I think they are setting themselves up for a fairy tale with a most tragic ending. (P.S. A man gave me a book of African proverbs. Put up with them for a month or so, will you?)
Mutuma Mathiu is the managing editor, Daily Nation
