The ‘silly season’ is here, but splashing the cash won’t deliver promised growth
Wananchi mill around some of the vehicles branded with Jubilee colours at the party’s new headquarters in Pangani, Nairobi, on September 7, 2016. PHOTO | JEFF ANGOTE| NATION MEDIA GROUP
What you need to know:
Our constitution effectively created two public services — the contracted one (cabinet and principal secretaries) and the permanent and pensionable one (the rest). The first lot has five years to “eat or die”, and, if lucky, run for political office.
Meanwhile the Imara Daima MCA candidates in Nairobi each have almost Sh10 million to spend.
Private sector mandarins and public sector nabobs, please look away now. Politicians take a bow.
We are entering that “cash splash” moment often referred to as pre-election “silly season”. This week’s Jubilee party merger/dissolution will cost, by the craziest estimates, between two and four billion shillings.
Since this is outside the official six-month electoral campaign period, it doesn’t count, right?
To put these billions in context, the combined annual income of TNA and URP was officially recorded by the Registrar of Political Parties as roughly Sh420 million in 2013.
It is by no coincidence that the opposition Coalition for Reforms and Democracy ( Cord) fairly claims a link between what looks like the beginning of a lavish spending spree by Jubilee to secure a second term, and matters unanswered from its current term— from NYS to the Eurobond.
The long and the short is we are looking at easily the most expensive election campaign that Kenya has ever witnessed. For one president, 47 governors and women reps and 290 Members of Parliament, ignoring the gender rule. And, with the gender-rule applying, sixty-odd senators (47 elected) and 2,000-plus MCAs (1,450 elected).
The Coalition on Accountable Party Financing estimated that Sh7 billion was spent in our contentious 2007 Presidential election. Unofficial estimates tell us that 2013 cost Sh15 billion for the Presidential race, and up to Sh 200 billion all told — by the 12,000 plus candidates who stood for office.
Imara Daima MCA
Now that the electoral register will actually be audited, and there is fresh new pressure to issue IDs, the latest trick that has emerged is the shock and awe of our intimidating campaign finance limits—Sh5 billion-plus per Presidential candidate, Sh15 billion per political party, Sh3 billion as the highest allowable individual contribution.
Then there is between almost Sh500 million for the Nairobi Governor to Sh67,000 for the brave person seeking office as an MCA in Fafi Ward, Garissa County. Meanwhile the Imara Daima MCA candidates in Nairobi each have almost Sh10 million to spend.
Let’s put these numbers in context. Taking a simple (and biased “max-min”) average of the gazetted campaign finance limits and applying them to 2013, we would be looking at overall campaign spending of Sh300 billion. Given reportedly increased interest and intent, especially at county level (governors, women reps, MCAs), we should expect this number to rise.
Assuming 18,000 candidates this time around, Sh500 billion is not an unreasonable higher-end spending estimation. Fuzzy numbers, yes, but aren’t our elections “fuzzy by design”? Let’s not even talk about where these funds will be sourced.
Sh500 billion? The 2016 Economic Survey tells us that the government spent Sh300 billion on goods and services in 2015/16. Over a period of 12 months, not the six month electoral campaign period. Remember our high-school definition of “demand-pull” inflation? Too much money chasing too few goods. Watch this space in 2017.
More interesting is we are closer to understanding how Kenya’s multi-party five-year “political-business-public service” cycle works against our transition to a double-digit GDP growth path.
Here’s how it works. For politicians, year one is all excitement and “homecoming”. This is also the time when the debt incurred in running for office is repaid, in cash and contracts. The middle years signify moments of anxiety, and corruption is all about building a “war chest”. The period we are now entering is the “spending spree” phase; a veritable life or death moment.
Political investment
Business has become accustomed to this cycle, so year one is a “wait and see” moment, the middle years are when serious investment happens (coinciding with war chests on the political side) and the current moment is part retrenchment/hold on “productive investment” and part careful, anonymous spending on “political investment” (to finance political campaigns).
Our constitution effectively created two public services — the contracted one (cabinet and principal secretaries) and the permanent and pensionable one (the rest). The first lot has five years to “eat or die”, and, if lucky, run for political office.
The second lot are still struggling to come to terms with the new constitution — they don’t like it, but they can’t do anything about it. At county level, the pretence of a permanent public service was long discarded; the contracted ones run the show, and the eating.
If you wonder at my pessimism, let’s also remember that in 2017, at least between the months of March and June, we will effectively be running two budgets, the Sh2.3 trillion 2016/17 budget that was supposed to run to June 30, and a new 2017/18 budget that will be approved on March 31.
While we will hear about careful “cut-off” procedures between these two fiscal years, we should be cautious of the fact that we still don’t have public accountability on 2013/14 spending (through sanctions) or 2014/15 spending (through public dissemination of the Auditor-General’s report). The mind boggles.
Enough with the numbers. Let us instead take a moment to reflect on the country we call Kenya. At one level, it’s easy to ask, “what is the point”? If cash and glitz is all that is needed to run a country, then whose country is this? Cynics may note that the one time we had an upward growth trend in the cycle (2003-2007), we ended up going to war.
Why do we debate interest rate caps and floors, agricultural mechanisation, tourism marketing and new roads and railways if the end result is a combination of jobless growth and increasing inequality, despite all the number crunching we do to convince ourselves that we are reducing poverty?
But there is another way to look at this. How do we bring real problems and issues back to the electoral campaign table? Where is the discourse that questions the claimed achievements of Jubilee, or Cord’s alternative agenda?
Mostly, how do we create a medium to long-term political-business-public service cycle that delivers growth and real progress, not cash and gimmickry, for Kenyans? If we are peer-recognised as top innovators, why isn’t this translating into the productivity element necessary for sustainable growth?
Call this my Bernie Sanders moment, but surely, if Nobel laureate Paul Krugman superbly argued that running a country isn’t the same as running a company, then, to my mind, cash will never be the same as GDP.
