It is nearing the end of the year.
The too-bland statements from the World Bank on the causes of our soaring inflation rates and prices — which managed, somehow, to avoid any possible political attribution — have been finally been challenged.
The parliamentary committee responsible for investigating the same has been reminded of the shape of our economic growth pattern. Which registers huge dips around every elections, slow recoveries following, plateaus at more or less reasonable levels depending on the factors the World Bank pointed out — supply shocks in terms of oil prices or demand shocks in terms of drought and food prices.
The Central Bank, standing accused of having — once again — failed to stand firm against the kinds of inflationary pressures that any electoral process seems to engender has finally acted. Monetary policy’s been tightened — both in terms of money supply and interest rate policy.
With the inevitable result that demand has slowed. The housing market seems set for its bubble to end, for example — who can afford credit at these rates?
But that is the sad fact of the matter. It is the small household trying dutifully to achieve its financial security and the small entrepreneur who is not only the base of market growth and competition but, through being so, the way in which growth is supposed to translate to better and cheaper services and trickle-down who always pay the price.
Oil prices have started to come down. But it will be a while before we normalise and stabilise. Thus those of us marginally employed are still making the only demands that we can. Raise our salaries so we can afford to pay for what we could pay for even a year ago.
The Central Organisation of Trade Unions is sabre-rattling for intervention to lower oil prices even further. The postal workers’ strike has not been deterred by the courts ruling it illegal. The jobs of identifiable leaders have been advertised. And now, the striking postal workers are calling for the International Criminal Court’s Prosecutor to promptly pick up their own boss!
There thus is a certain humour in some of this. But life, of course, for most Kenyans is not humorous at all. Most Kenyans do the best that they can to get by. The tragedy is that their efforts keep being undone — in ways that most of us simply have no control over.
Our demands therefore always focus on the most evident. If we’re employed and unionised, we strike for higher wages. Whether we’re employed or not, we have the sense that the government must do something for us.
Parliament, being populist by nature, picks up the refrain. And we are tempted to feel sorry for the Central Bank and Treasury.
But the temptation for pity quickly passes. Because we immediately recall that there are, in fact, ways that the Central Bank and the Treasury are responsible for our predicament. We are back to the question of political pressure and how the Central Bank and the Treasury handle the same.
Does the Central Bank resist the urge to supply money outside of the economy’s needs to feed the electoral war chests? Does the Treasury stay firm when it comes to ensuring toxic debt — in our context debt related to questionable procurement and contracting payments — doesn’t secretly slither into our budget and stay there? Did it, has it done so in relation to the Anglo-Leasing contract payments?
What the Central Bank and the Treasury need to do is simply speak out, professionally, and the people would do the rest.
L. Muthoni Wanyeki is doing her graduate studies at L’Institut d’etudes politiques (Sciences Po) in Paris, France
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