Raila Odinga vs Gen Z: How a "Proud" Father of the Nation Became the Enemy of the Revolution (Aka Fraud Central: Kenya's Brisk Stroll Into Debt Default)

When Kenya's Gen Z Revolution began around mid-2024, the Right Honourable Dr Raila Amolo Odinga, EGH, formerly Prime Minister of the republic, enjoyed mad respect and unfaltering goodwill from the revolutionaires. (He had, after all, won at least 50% of the votes in the highly disputed and widely discredited 2022 polls.) In fact, youte dem asked him, pretty please, with a cherry on top, to kindly sit this one out, stay home, relax, and watch them at work; they had everything under control.

All Agwambo needed to do, they implored, was to be patient and wait just two weeks; and his problem would be finally resolved, his decade-long dream realised: sending the Butcher of Sugoi, the "son of a nobody"—at once a perpetual thorn in his flesh and the last vestige of the UhuRuto dynamic duo that had senselessly robbed him of victory at the ballot on at least two occasions—back to the land of his ancestors. But in a cruel twist of irony, Baba, it turned out, was too hungry to wait.

Meanwhile, Parliament was breached and torched ("Mr Speaker, sir, I'm here to address you!"), and the million Gen Z march to #OccupyStateHouse was well underway. William Ruto was first jolted into shock, and then fully flabberwhelmed and publicly overgasted, as he stumbled onto his back foot. In the lead up to #OccupyParliament, he had stealthily evacuated his family to America—where, in sweet irony, they had accompanied him on his celebrated victorious state visit only a fortnight erstwhile—acutely aware that it was all over; the house he had built with cards was about to be blown away by the wind of change, and he was more than ready to throw in the towel. Kitumbua, as Wahenga had once observed, kiliingia mchanga. It was a wrap. Finito. And then the unthinkable happened.

Inexplicably, and to everyone's consternation, Raila Odinga, famous coiner of the #RutoMustGo mantra only months before, decided—without reference to anyone, least of all the tens of lifeless Gen Zs now lying prone in the streets of Nairobi, victims of summary police executions during peaceful protests; the lucky ones looking like Swiss cheese, what with bodies riddled with bullets beyond recognition; others lying obliviously next to their own brain matter carelessly strewn about them; the rest disappeared from the face of the earth without a trace, and occasionally popping in their tens in a quarry dumping site just outside the city, ironically situated 50 metres from a police station—to give William Ruto a timely and much needed shot in the arm, thereby miraculously pulling his star-crossed presidency from the very cusp of the abyss.

So why did Baba do it?

Many theories have been advanced in an attempt to explain this curious lapse in judgement that ended up emboldening a president beleaguered by his own voters, who was on the verge of letting go, but instead now quickly transmogrified into a vengeful and haematophagous persona. Heads would soon roll, and not those belonging to his Cabinet or members of his government, mind. But the most elucidating came from Lee Njiru, former press secretary to President Daniel Arap Moi.

The most ironic aspect of Njiru's wise counsel, conveyed as a kernel of timeous but largely ignored truth, is that it was proffered in the thick of the 2022 election cycle. But Kenyans, being the world champions of voting, (remember "Choices have consequences"?) would hear none of it.

With the benefit of hindsight, we should all have seen it coming. Vice deputy supremo of the opposition Azimio La Umoja Alliance Kalonzo Musyoka, ever the whistleblower, had warned that, if ignored, Gen Zs would blow the the political class to irrelevance. But in cold retrospect, it really was a coded message, a clarion call to his political cousins to regroup, quick-plus-fast-minus slow, in the face of the unforeseen and impossible-to-predict Gen Z tsunami that had caught them flatfooted as a unit.

Reading the national temperature with a broken thermometer and wrongly deducing that the Kenya he inherited from Uhuru Kenyatta (who, ironically, had prophesied about the ticking time bomb that is youth mass unemployment and growing social angst) was still made up of a traditionally pliant and meek citizenry only good as voting machines, William Ruto quickly embarked on the business as usual laissez-faire attitude perfected by the strongmen who came before him.

Up to today, Ruto cannot and will nary believe that the Gen Z Revolution is organic, a direct consequence of and unprecedented response to his and Uhuru's inept style of governance, and has alternately blamed it on everyone from Russia to the Ford Foundation and everyone in between; a testament to the sheer ineptitude of the National Intelligence Service, which his deputy Rigathi Gachagua publicly called out on national TV, least of all for failing to sensitise the big man on the hill to the national mood, public sentiment, and outright rejection surrounding the ill-advised, doomed-to-fail, and widely ridiculed Finance Bill 2024 which set in motion, in cinematic slo-mo, the fall of William Ruto in the first place.

President Ruto, and Uhuru Kenyatta before him, rising to power on a populist wave, had only one job: to read and internalise the national zeitgeist. As Jimi Wanjigi, Safina party's presidential candidate in the last election, has famously observed, there are two steps in the final liberation of any nation, and they follow in tandem: first comes the political rights phase which, in Kenya's case, began with the First Liberation led by Mau Mau, that won us independence and self governance; through to the Second Liberation in the 90s under Moi which brought about a multiparty dispensation in our body politic, and concluded with the promulgation of the 2010 Constitution, acknowledged at inception as the most progressive in the world, where we cut up and shared our political rights.

Kenyans are today politically emancipated, and our political rights are etched in stone and enshrined in the Constitution for good measure. Try though he may, one will never take away those hard earned gains, chief among them freedom of media and expression, freedom of assembly, and the right to picket and protest. But try telling that to tinpot dictator William Ruto, who seems to think the Constitution is merely made up of suggestions.

In 2010, Kenya entered the economic rights phase. Almost one-and-a-half decades later, many are yet to internalise this subtle shift, hence they struggle to understand the current political landscape and what is going on in Kenya today.

UhuRuto's sole duty was to rise to the occasion and guide Kenya into the next phase of the evolution of our society, economic empowerment and wealth creation, seeing as our political self actualisation was already firmly in place. Instead, myopia, avarice, and self importance took centre stage and they failed flat, opting for an unprecedented debt binge that has now come full circle to bite William Ruto in the posterior.

Between July 2013 and June 2023, the decade that the UhuRuto regime was in power, Kenya's total expenditure amounted to KSh 14.6 trillion. Deducting KSh 13.3 trillion tax revenue for the same period leaves a deficit of KSh 1.3 trillion. This is all they needed to borrow, in ten years, to manage all our expenses and ensure smooth operations.

For the sake of argument and fiscal prudence, let's imagine we didn't want to borrow and instead shaved off the deficit from the KSh 6 trillion allocated for development during the UhuRuto decade. We would still be left with KSh 4.7 trillion, more than plenty to cover development projects. Put simply, UhuRuto didn't need to borrow a shiny shilling. But instead, the muppets went on a debt binge and accumulated an eye-watering debt of KSh 7.7 trillion, KSh 6.4 trillion more than we needed, an equivalent of 60 years' worth of budget deficits in advance that is due like yesterday. This is the foreign debt that William Ruto has been yapping on about ceaselessly. And you wonder why he is shedding weight at such a phenomenal rate. The chickens are home to roost, is all.

BEFORE

AFTER

To put it all in perspective, consider this: When Mwai Kibaki took over from Daniel Arap Moi in 2002, Kenya's debt burden stood at 28 shillings per 100, against a tax revenue of KSh 170 billion. At the end of Kibaki's term, he had shaved it off considerably, and Uhuru inherited a dynamic economy boasting a debt burden of 18 shillings per 100 with tax revenue of KSh 1 trillion. Uhuru, in his turn, handed over to Ruto a whopping 70 shillings per 100 against KSh 2 trillion collected. Today, depending on who you ask, Kenya's foreign debt is between 70 and 85 shillings for every 100 shillings the government collects. And it's all because of that pesky KSh 6.4 trillion! That's life's reward for catapulting a duo of crimes against humanity suspects to the two highest offices in the land.

Stunningly, none of that money, debt that we did not ask for or need, ever reached the country. It does not appear on any UhuRuto budget because it did not fund anything, and does not reflect anywhere in the public record.

Auditor General Nancy Gathungu’s recent revelation that in 2023, Kenya paid KSh 1.44 billion in interest on foreign loans for which the country is yet to receive the funds serves only to deepen the mystery. (See my article on the Doctrine of Odious Debt for an overview of the subject.)

Don't be mistaken; the fight for economic emancipation, like our struggle for political freedom, will not be an easy one. The owners of capital in Kenya are averse to sharing and will not let go easily. And this is where political ideology enters the story. The theft that is going on under William Ruto, which began in the UhuRuto era, is mind bogglingly egregious to say the least. And this is the regime that Raila Odinga has now bent over backwards to prop up, against the wishes of literally all Kenyans.

Like newborn babies, Kenyans' eyes are slowly opening, and we are beginning to recognise the railroad job that the political class has been doing on us for 60 years now. What is happening here is that we have just ushered in the era of politics of ideology. Personality cult politics are so last election!

Looking back, there was no difference between Azimio's and Kenya Kwanza's electoral promises. Small wonder then that newly-appointed Treasury CS and immediate former chairman of Raila Odinga's ODM party, John Mbadi, who fiercely opposed Ruto's Finance Bill 2024, drumming up support against it and eventually voting no, can now inform the nation, without fear of contradiction, that he fully believes in William Ruto's "bottom-up" economics and is bent on making things work, beginning with reintroducing some of the doomed bill's provisions as amendments. It is for the same reason that his immediate former deputy party leader, Wycliffe Oparanya, former governor of Kakamega County and a harsh critic of the Hustler Fund and now CS for Cooperatives, has made a public undertaking to make the fund hit the stratosphere if it kills him. His ex co-deputy party leader, also a former governor (of Mombasa County), His Excellency Ali Hassan Joho, who made a famous debut in the US Embassy's notorious Drug Dossier at the tail end of the Moi regime, alongside various Kenyans of high station, and who spectacularly fell out with President Uhuru Kenyatta after the latter publicly torched a ship transporting KSh 1.3 billion worth of cocaine allegedly belonging to him, now finds himself at the helm of the Ministry of Blue Economy, effectively in charge of all ships within Kenya's borders and share of the high seas. Meanwhile, leader of Parliamentary minority Opiyo Wandayi found himself catapulted to the powerful and coveted Energy Ministry, where he immediately hit the ground running and accompanied the president to launch an electricity installation the very next day after his appointment. It's all smoke and mirrors, folks.

Which brings us to the august 13th Parliament of the Republic of Kenya and the fall of Ruto's finance bills, the government's official announcement of revenue raising measures. Barely a fortnight ago, the Court of Appeal cut the legs off the Finance Bill 2023, this hot on the heels of Finance Bill 2024 experiencing a stillbirth at the hands of Gen Z. As you may be aware, a government is run by tax revenue and debt to plug any deficits.

The long and short of it is that the Constitution, in Article 220, stipulates categorically that an appropriation bill, known to you as the budget, must be submitted alongside estimates of both revenue and expenditure. But William Ruto, since coming to power, has repeatedly submitted only expenditure estimates, and not revenue estimates as required by law. And that's why Finance Bill 2023 fell flat on its face. Why, pray, is he concealing the revenue estimates?

It can only mean that he is avoiding public scrutiny, because the entire package is what Parliament approves (or more accurately, should approve) and passes into law. But what is contained in those revenue estimates will blow your socks right off. William Ruto is leaving his revenue collection methodology amorphous because he does not want it to become public knowledge. For in those revenue estimates lies the smoking gun, his very Waterloo.

As a rule, loans, being income for the government, appear in revenue estimates, along with their repayment schedules. Remember, the law stipulates that loans can only be taken for development, and not recurrent expenditure or any other use. So you will find that William Ruto listed loans in his development budgets, but somehow neglected to include them in the revenue estimates.

Upon closer inspection, the noose tightens around his neck, because the loans he has been listing in the development budgets of his last two attempts at budget making, which have both bitten the dust, are soft loans, IMF and World Bank loans. Domestic loans— treasury bonds and bills—appear nowhere; neither do the infamous Euro Bonds, and certainly not the one we partially paid off earlier this year with much pomp and fanfare. So what exactly did the Euro Bonds fund? No one has been able to trace a single shilling to any project. That is why William Ruto has deliberately kept his revenue estimates hidden for the last two years, and why his Finance Bill 2023 crashed and burned at the Court of Appeal. Alas, the game is afoot!

The same fate awaits the supplementary appropriation bill that Parliament passed in record time in June, right after Finance Bill 2024 ejaculated prematurely under pressure from Gen Z because, like all Ruto budgets before it, it was read and passed without a revenue estimate.

In a nutshell, the government is now forced to adopt and re-implement the last legally binding finance bill, Uhuru Kenyatta's Finance Bill 2022, and prices across the board will revert to pre-Ruto levels to ensure the cost of living plummets dramatically, which is all Kenyans have demanded of Ruto for more than a year now. It's just a question of when. No lessons learned here.

William Ruto, for the entire length of his short presidency, has deliberately misled the nation and intentionally broken the law by keeping revenue estimates out of reach in an attempt to thwart scrutiny of the ginormous debt crisis that he and and Uhuru Kenyatta have plunged Kenya into, notably with the acquiesce and abetment of the 13th Parliament.

Remember "Mr Speaker sir"? (RIP, by the way.) The Parliament of the Republic of Kenya now stands indicted; it's as good as dissolved. Kaput. Done and dusted. The rubber-stamping of Ruto's Cabinet Secretaries, passing of more dubious laws, and all it's activities since that breach are irrelevant and legally nonbinding. "Mr Speaker sir" was Article 1 in action, Kenyans taking back the sovereign power they donated to that arm of government. Parliament no longer represents the people, and has not done so for more than one-and-a-half months now. People's Choice Theory, which really is Article 1 of the Constitution of Kenya, stipulates that the people SHALL exercise their power directly or indirectly.

The statutory two years are almost up, and our honourable parliamentary representatives will not believe the mass recall that Kenyans have planned for them. I personally cannot wait to see how Zakayo will run the country without a budget. Debt default, being inescapable at this point, is waiting on the other side of Reality Bites with arms wide open, and IMF, Ruto's erstwhile giggle buddies, will not bat an eyelid to dispatch Kenya the Ghana way of debt distress exchange.

When our massive foreign debt is finally called in, the first line of defence and the first to fall will be the banks. See Argentina, Greece, Lebanon, Peru, et al. (Aside: who owns banks in Kenya?) So bye-bye MPesa, and hello barter trade. The Ruto regime will effectively have taken Kenya back a full 5,000 years since money was invented.

It is being loudly whispered that in just a few months' time, William Ruto will not be able to afford even the teargas to put down the #MaandamanoDaily nationwide protests against him, let alone pay Kenya Police, his personal squad of assassins, who are yet to receive their August salaries more that 10 days into the month because an innovative patriot hacked the account and made away with the money. It is as though the gods have conspired against the Ruto regime. The optics are dour. William Ruto has failed as president. #RutoMustGo!

As things stand, the only honourable thing now left for the Butcher of Sugoi, a man without a shred of honour, to do is tuck his tail between his legs and run to the hills, preferably Nandi Hills. And with him goes Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua as per the Constitution, along with the illegitimate 13th Parliament, headed by disgraced Speaker Moses Wetangula, third in line, and Ruto's entire government. Far from the Constitutional crisis that prophets of doom have predicted, there will be no power vacuum. As a stop-gap measure, Kenyans are proposing a caretaker government to oversee the transition to a credible general election with the looming fall of the Three Stooges as constitutionally prescribed for continuity of government. Political empowerment is an ass.

The entire political class has failed us. Currently, Kenya in excess of 1,913 elected officials across the board, from imperial president all the way down to lowly Members of County Assemblies. I will be completely gobsmacked should just 1/1913th of them make it back. But those who believe in God won, right?

Viva la revoluçion! ✊🏿