Ruto’s mid-term report: A tragic spectacular flop

A year after President William Ruto and his deputy Rigathi Gachagua ascended to power, I bumped into a friend of mine who was their overzealous supporter.

He asked me to assess the performance of the regime so far. I replied that my initial skepticism had only increased. I assured my friend I was not prejudiced against the two because of their past association with the Kanu dictatorship, Ruto having been a member of the notorious YK’92 pro-Kanu lobby group and Gachagua having been a ruthless district officer.

After all, people do overcome their sordid past and go on to do good deeds. F.W. De Klerk, a hardcore Afrikaner ideologue, freed Nelson Mandela. Mikhail Gorbachev, a longtime party apparatchik, reformed the Soviet Union.

What had increased my skepticism, I said, were incessant reports in mainstream media about wanton wastage and theft by the regime.

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But I also conceded that it was too early to pass a definitive judgment. I would reserve a definite judgment for later when the regime reached the half way mark.

Earlier this year, I bumped into my friend again. I told him I had seen all I needed to see to be able to pass definitive judgment, even though the midterm point was some months away. I quoted reports from the Auditor General and Controller of Budget on wanton wastage and runaway thievery. Every week, I said, we awoke to yet other revelations of corruption and mismanagement.

I referred to the unconscionable travel budgets of the president, his ministers, governors and other officials. I referred to Mr Ruto’s admission that his ministers were incompetent. I quoted “shareholder” Gachagua admitting that many ministers changed clothes at the airport. I referred to the infantilism of ministers obsessed with showing off expensive watches and belts.

I said hospitality budgets for offices, including unconstitutional ones, kept going up. As the regime wallowed in decadent opulence, every department — from health to education — was in chaos. There seemed to be, as I would write later in a column, “no central organising ethos or purpose in government” .

But even so, I could not have foreseen the youth revolt against the Finance Bill 2024. Kenyans were being asked to pay more and tighten their belts while government officials were living large. The youth in their thousands poured into the streets in an unprecedented show of anger, demanding withdrawal of this Bill from hell and the resignation of Mr Ruto.

Police, and snipers stationed on rooftops, opened fire on the unarmed youth. The death toll so far is 60. An unknown number were disappeared, and hundreds were maimed.

On August 22, the Ruto-Gachagua regime attained two years of age, just a few months shy of the halfway mark. Nothing screams failure more than the lifeless bodies of youth lying on cold city streets, executed by their own government. There is no way to sugarcoat the assessment. The Ruto-Gachagua regime this far has been a tragic spectacular failure.

Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political commentator