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FIRST WORD
On Political Duplicity
In Kenya it seems we actually do need to have an expert to help
us decipher political speak since the words and actions of the political class in the recent past have become very opaque and confusing which leaves us wondering if they wake up to a different Kenya every morning .
A case in point is the rather surprising but pleasant admonition to the government by the vocal Senator , James Orengo , who also doubles as a close confidant and advisor to Raila , a leading proponent for the BBI as a supposed remedy to all political ills in Kenya .
Orengo was chastising the government on its apparent insatiable capacity for loans and warning the government that the trend which took root at the beginning of the current administration is way out of control and poses massive dangers to the country .
The Chinese strategy of slowly entrapping developing countries into easy long term debt is well documented and there are many cases to quote of the vicious nature of the Chinese when their debt falls due and is defaulted .
The Chinese have set in motion an economic hegemony which has at its source a heinous plot to colonize resource rich but poor developing countries by posing as development partners and advancing loans for massive and prestigious projects that impress voters but entrap the government .
The pandemic that has upended the world as we know it has especially affected the tourism industry which is one of Kenya ’ s top foreign currency earners and hence our ability to service our debts has been greatly impaired .
It was refreshing to hear him remind the government that to imagine they can always revert to taxation will not work as the country was reeling from the pandemic effects and there had been many workers laid off and many businesses were still hampered by the curfew still in force .
So his caution was not only timely but a welcome perspective from a politician , as they seem to be oblivious of how a government is funded and they have been on the forefront of paying themselves astronomical salaries quite out of sync with our economic reality .
What does not make sense is the fact that he is one of the BBI hawks in total support of his party leader and the handshake architect . We assume we are correct in the belief that if you can see economic sense in one area it should be translatable to other areas .
One of the biggest contention in the BBI is the fact that the document proposes to increase the number of elective positions in the guise of rendering a more inclusive government by inviting more to the table to , they claim , put an end to periodic election violence .
We were under the impression that that concern was addressed , albeit inefficiently , by devolution . There cannot be a community in Kenya today that can claim to be left out of the country ’ s government as the forty seven counties cater to that .
In fact our point of contention is that in creating the counties the politicians went overboard and created huge county assemblies and expensive county bureaucracies that turned the county governments
02 MAL40 / 21 ISSUE