The Kenyan economy has recovered faster than her neighbours. Air travel to Nairobi is once again very expensive. Even baby Uganda Airlines is quoting a coach ticket at $365 and $760 for business class/premier cabin.
I am pinching myself for ignoring the tirades my cab driver in April was blowing over my head as we travelled from our hotel to the Kenya Museum. A trip to the Kenya Museum is so special, it is not one to be mixed with anything.
As we drove, first was the Attorney General, former Speaker, Justin Muturi, a member of the Kenya Kwanzaa cabinet. His motorcade had just two cars, a lead car and his ministerial car. A modest siren, nothing of the sort that accompanies our cabinet ministers to work.
Works Minister Katumba Wamala is always labouring helplessly in the media stating only the President and Vice President enjoy automatic right of way. In the old days, the Kenyan President, powerful as he sounded, made it from State House to downtown with just three vehicles.
Kenyans lined the streets of Nairobi when our President once travelled by road to Nairobi in a convoy of 100 cars!
At the height of his power, Second Prime Minister, Right Honourable Raila Odinga had a small car with a siren shuttling him to his Upper Hill office from Langata.
In the time of Kenya “Mbaya” runaway inflation which has been contained, the sirens rubbed Kenyans especially the younger people the wrong way. Some of the stories about the government’s extravagance were exaggerated.
Kenya’s political trade cartels that dominate most consumer commodities, sugar, wheat, fuel are legendary. Every time a trade war erupts between Kenya and its poorer neighbours, Uganda and Tanzania, there is a lucrative line behind it.
Uganda’s farmers are attacked for low cost maize, and if a big cargo is docking at Mombasa, then is the time to find all the aflatoxins in the maize to bar it from entry in Kenya or limit its consumption for animals.
In the reading of the East African Community’s budget, the Treasury Secretary, Professor Njuguna Ndun’gu, was the least cheerful of the East African Ministers.
Matia Kasaija thanked the President for retaining him at Treasury and exhorted Members of Parliament to clap for him. Nothing compared to the flare of his Tanzanian counterpart Mwigulu Nchemba or the younger Fisheries Minister who was holding a brief for the Zanzibari Minister of Finance.
Mr Ruto’s condemnation was sweeping. He sent everybody home except his Deputy who is directly elected and Prime Cabinet Secretary, Musalia Mudavadi who in the Kenyan game of chess, is seen in some circles as president in waiting. A few months before, Mr Mudavadi formally folded his party ANC into Kenya Kwanzaa.
By the time, Mr Ruto plucked off the ministerial flags, he had already thrown Members of Parliament under the bus when he rejected the Finance Bill, 2024. So did President Museveni angry over the reallocation of Shs 700 billion in the budget by Members of Parliament to fund their priorities.
It is an irony that the Kenyan ministerial flag came to symbolise this anger. Kenyan ministers are not just rich, they are “super-rich” they make our ministers far more modest. A Kenyan cabinet secretary would not for example be associated with a scandal as small as “iron-sheets”.
A retired Kenyan President walks home with a one-time pay off of Kshs 48 million and a K Shs 2.8 million monthly pension, plus 12 vehicles. Mr Kenyatta sleeps next door from his former public housing State House. And so does the rest of the pecking order of former state officials.
Ruto is trying to convince Mr Odinga and his Azimio movement to join him in government. He will have to convince Mr Odinga and his top lieutenant former Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka equally to give up their big pensions.
As Generation Z was on the streets, these pensions had to continue being funded. This has caused the Kenyan political system total ulcers !
For now, let the sirens be silent, and the familiar noise of the matatu touts take over.
