Ruto’s half-time report: A tragic, spectacular flop

By TEE NGUGI

A year after President William Ruto and his deputy Rigathi Gachagua came to power, I happened to meet a friend who was their ardent supporter.

He asked me to assess the regime's performance so far. I replied that my initial scepticism had only grown stronger. I assured my friend that I had no prejudice against the two because they were previously associated with the Kanu dictatorship. Ruto was a member of the notorious pro-Kanu lobby group YK'92 and Gachagua was an unscrupulous county official.

Eventually, people overcome their dirty past and go on to do good deeds. FW De Klerk, a hard-core Afrikaner ideologue, freed Nelson Mandela. Mikhail Gorbachev, a long-time party apparatchik, reformed the Soviet Union.

I said my skepticism was heightened by the constant reports in the mainstream media about wanton waste and theft by the regime.

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But I also acknowledged that it was too early to make a final judgement. I will save a final judgement for later, when the regime is halfway there.

I met my friend again at the beginning of the year. I told him I had seen everything I needed to see to make a final judgement, even though the mid-term audits were still several months away. I cited reports from the Court of Auditors and the Comptroller of Budgets about wanton waste and rampant theft. Every week, I said, we woke up to new revelations of corruption and mismanagement.

I referred to the unscrupulous 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 their clothes at the airport. I referred to the infantilism of ministers who are obsessed with showing off expensive watches and belts.

I said that hospitality budgets for departments, including unconstitutional ones, kept rising. While the regime reveled in decadent opulence, chaos reigned in all ministries from health to education. There seemed, as I later wrote in a column, “no central organizing ethos or purpose in government.”

But even so, I could not have foreseen the youth revolt against the Finance Bill 2024. Kenyans were asked to pay more and tighten their belts while government officials lived large. Thousands of youths poured into the streets in an unprecedented outburst of anger, demanding the repeal of this bill from hell and the resignation of Mr Ruto.

Police and snipers posted on rooftops opened fire on the unarmed youths. The death toll so far stands at 60. An unknown number disappeared and hundreds were mutilated.

On August 22, the Ruto-Gachagua regime celebrated its second birthday, just months before the halfway point. Nothing screams failure more than the lifeless bodies of young people lying on cold streets, executed by their own government. There is no way to sugarcoat that assessment. The Ruto-Gachagua regime has been a tragic, spectacular failure so far.

Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political commentator