Business Daily (Nairobi)
10 July 2009
editorial
By rejecting a fleet of top of the range cars bought two months ago, State House has executed one of the most successful public relations coups in Kenya in recent times.
It is what one may call the magic touch that will enable President Kibaki to achieve that proverbial feat of having his cake and eating it at the same time.
On the face of it, returning the new fuel guzzlers puts State House in the pole position to leading the walk into the unpalatable world of economic austerity.
Yet the fact remains that State House still owns the biggest fleet of fuel guzzlers than any facet of government - which they are not about to give up.
What rejecting the new fleet of top of the range cars has done is to divert public attention to the bunch of status-craving individuals in the Cabinet who are being asked to migrate to new, less prestigious, models of road transport.
As is often the case with most public discourse in Kenya, the on-going debate over what cars Cabinet ministers and their assistants should drive has been so politicised the country is losing sight of the issues that matter most.
First, not many people understand that the desire to migrate ministers to less prestigious cars is a policy decision aimed at reducing waste in government estimated to stand at about 20 per cent of the national budget every year.
For most, it is merely a political move aimed at humbling the corrupt and arrogant politicians.
Economists say cutting waste in government by a mere five per cent would leave Treasury with more than Sh50 billion to pump into useful projects such as equipping schools and hospitals or even support agriculture.
But driving top of the range cars is not the only or even the main source of waste in government. Billions of shillings are in fact being wasted on contracts to buy worthless items, construction of white elephants that dot nearly every corner of the country and in the use of special budgetary allocations such as the Youth, Women and Constituency Development funds.
In trying to push for a cut in waste in one very powerful facet of government with being equally aggressive on others, Finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta is committing the old sin of failing to anchor economic decisions on the political realities of his environment.
This is the mistake that his predecessor, Amos Kimunya, made when he tried to tax MPs and paid dearly for it. Legal experts say it makes no sense enacting laws that are not enforceable.
By the same vein, it should occur to Mr Kenyatta there is futility in trying to formulate an economic or budgetary policy that is not politically viable.
For this particular initiative, non-viability lies in one critical area.
The vagueness of the policy that has left just a small number of public officers -- ministers and their assistants -- at the centre of the controversy while leaving out a large number of senior public officials who are also moving around in fuel guzzlers.
That list includes judges, top military officers, the police commissioner, AP commandant, provincial commissioners, Central Bank governor and his deputy, and the many fat cats in State corporations.
Besides, no change has been forthcoming in the area of escort cars used by the vice president's, the prime minister's and presidential guards who are still driving around in fuel guzzling limousines.
Anyone who thinks this is a small matter should just try to imagine the Minister of Justice going to an official function in a Volkswagen Polo only for the Lord Chief Justice to arrive in a top of the range limousine.
If that is not sounding politically difficult enough, think of the reality of ministers attending national celebrations in their less prestigious cars only for police inspectors, and constables guarding the prime minister or the president, to arrive in limousines.
It will certainly take more than he is doing for Mr Kenyatta to push this one through.
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