Kenya's President William Ruto. The two years of the Ruto regime have been an unmitigated disaster. It is corrupt, inept and taking the country back to dictatorship.
A few months after the Ruto regime came into office, a ruling party MP proposed the removal of presidential term limit. At that time, many thought the purpose of the proposal was to offer comic relief after a high-stakes election.
But this column warned Kenyans that the seemingly lone voice making the proposal might not be alone. Now, a Bill by a ruling party senator has formalised the idea into a Bill that seeks to extend term limits for elected officials from the current 5 to 7 years.
In the column warning Kenyans to be wary of the proposal, I wrote, “The movement of such a proposal from the fringes of party politics to the centre of national debate might look like a haphazard process, but it’s only later that people realise how well choreographed the process was.”
This Bill before the Senate is confirmation of that prediction.
There is no cogent or altruistic reason why term limits should be removed or extended. Africa’s crisis of governance has underpinned its crisis of development.
That is why, over the years, we have been trying to build strong governance institutions that are independent of presidents and their acolytes.
These institutions — parliament, judiciary, electoral and other bodies — create systems and procedures that not only check the excesses of the government, but also enable the citizenry to hold government to account by choosing to terminate or extend its mandate.
Term limits, therefore, are not whimsical and arbitrary, they are the point at which citizens assess their government and choose to extend or terminate its mandate. They are at the heart of the democratic idea.
Countries in Africa that have removed or extended term limits are characterised by dictatorship and economic stagnation. This fact is exemplified by our own experience.
Jomo Kenyatta’s 14-year reign was not only extremely oppressive, it also left a country divided along tribal lines, and one with a fabulously wealthy political class and millions of hungry citizens.
Daniel arap Moi’s 24-year-old reign exacerbated Kenyatta’s excesses. By the time Moi left office in 2002, every sector had been robbed to a standstill. The purpose-built torture chambers at Nyayo House are a gruesome symbol of the Moi era.
Term limits are not a hindrance to development. Deng Xiao-Ping’s 10-year reign moved millions of Chinese from abject poverty to prosperity.
Lula Da Silva’s first 10 years as president established Brazil as a major economic power. Ten years of Lee Kuan Yew’s reign laid the foundation for Singapore’s meteoric rise.
By contrast, two years of Ruto’s regime have been an unmitigated disaster. By its own admission, and revelations by the sacked Deputy President, the regime is corrupt and inept and is pulling the country back to dictatorship.
That is not the basis on which a regime seeks term limit removal or extension. On the contrary, the assessment of the Ruto regime so far makes term limits our lifeline.
Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political commentator
