Saturday, June 9, 2012

Come off it, IEBC, that election budget is an attempt at daylight robbery


Come off it, IEBC, that election budget is an attempt at daylight robbery

  SHARE BOOKMARKPRINTEMAILRATING

By MURITHI MUTIGA mmutiga@ke.nationmedia.com
Posted  Saturday, June 9  2012 at  17:32
At lunch with a Japanese ambassador a couple of years ago, the envoy made an observation which refuses to leave the mind.
The question was whether he would miss Kenya, a country he said was the most beautiful he had ever served in, and whether he was looking forward to serving in Austria, his next posting.
The ambassador’s brows furrowed, he took a deep breath and said: He was really looking forward to leaving Kenya. This is a splendid country, he said, one of the best places on earth to live.
But he said the thing he liked least about Kenya was that he had to manage so many billions of Japanese taxpayers’ funds.
This, he said, constantly gave him sleepless nights because his brief was to make sure that the money committed to various projects was put to good use.
So, yes, he was looking forward to leaving Kenya. He would no longer be tasked with the responsibility of worrying whether Japanese taxpayers’ funds were being spent prudently.
Instead, he was heading to Vienna, the European capital of dance and culture, where he could carry on the various duties expected of an ambassador but, crucially, he would not need to manage any finances.
Japan does not offer aid to Austria and he would not worry about how billions of Japanese Yen were being spent.
Share This Story
Share 
Contrast that with Kenya. In making Cabinet appointments here, there is only one consideration in deciding whether a Cabinet appointment is “prestigious” or not. That’s the size of the budget allocated to that ministry.
So you’ll find that the moment somebody is elected president, there are only a few dockets that the really politically connected people want to be appointed to: Roads, Energy, Internal Security, Agriculture, suchlike.
These ministries are not considered prestigious because they offer people a chance to serve wananchi.
Instead, they are deemed as the best ministries because they offer a better chance to loot wananchi’smoney since they traditionally get the heftiest budgetary allocation and the person in charge can dish out extremely lucrative tenders, for a consideration.
So here’s Kenya’s curse. The key difference between us and the Japanese, Malaysians, South Koreans, Singaporeans and others who have soared past us economically in the last 40 years is that those people see tax money as what it is: wananchi’s money.
In Kenya, we think that the money in the treasury is owned by the Finance minister or his tribe. We see the billions in the public purse as someone else’s money.
That’s why the ordinary mwananchi is not questioning the wisdom of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) in spending Sh35 billion on an election on the basis of a budget which is simply extortionate – more expensive, even than the one in Congo which was viewed as one of the world’s most costly.
The IEBC, according to its original budget, says it wants to buy 437 new vehicles and to hire hundreds of others at Sh17,000 each per day.
Anybody who has hired a vehicle knows that a saloon car will typically go for Sh3,000 and a four wheel drive might go for anything between Sh5,000 and Sh10,000.
Can IEBC officials really say in good conscience that Sh135 million is the best deal they can get for a lawyer to simply swear in the people taking part in the electoral exercise?
But here’s why the IEBC and many other governmental departments perceive they can get away with programmes that are nothing short of daylight robbery from the public purse.
Wananchi have failed to understand the notion that the money the government spends is actually their own money. If we don’t show more outrage when governmental functionaries make moves to loot our money, we will be merrily looted into utter poverty.
mmutiga@ke.nationmedia.com

No comments:

Post a Comment