Uhuru’s final budget is a suicide pass to our next President

Football, or soccer, is a beautiful game. It chiefly relies on the use of legs, and sometimes, heads.  That’s the physicality part of it. Of course, the best players use their heads, before their legs. The game of rugby emerged from football when some young chap decided to run with the ball rather than kick it. To make it a little more different, the shape of the ball changed from logical round to uncomfortable oval. 

In short, the game went pear-shaped. The world enjoys both sporting experiences. Barrett and Moung’a are as good watches as Cristiano and Messi. Cullen was the best.  Injera is ours in this after the fact University of Nairobi “Mean Machine” golden age.  There isn’t enough space here for those legends.

Or Marshall Mulwa’s fantastic “First Eleven”. The fundamental Kenyan fault is not to learn from history.

There is an interesting difference between soccer and rugby. In the latter case, one needs the ball in order to run.  In the former, one needs to run in order to get the ball. This is a difference of subtlety. Modern soccer now thinks like rugby (possession etc) while modern rugby thinks like soccer (angles etc).

In the scheme of big things in this world, however, rugby looks like it needs more smarts than soccer.

Because Election 2022 is occupying everyone’s mind, it may be interesting to delve into the sporting proclivities of our current and future potentates. Like rugby player here, soccer dad there, volley-ballist somewhere, “catch-ballist” there (I hear that’s a real sport and Kenya actually has a team). 

By thinking in sporting terms (and I have argued before that you fix Kenya by fixing food, trade and sports), we might take a “Sports Kenya” view to the thus far unpublished 2022 Budget Policy Statement (BPS).

Here’s how our budgetary “Sports Kenya” works. Having received and basically ignored sector resource bids announced to the public, the National Treasury then publishes the BPS with next to no notice for public comment.  We have been here before. 

But this is a 2022/23 election year “finish and go home” budget that seems to be heading to a likely violent choice between a tractor (Tinga) and a wheelbarrow.

As a former rugby player at school, President Uhuru Kenyatta’s final budget is what the Brits call a “hospital pass”, which we long ago translated as a “suicide pass”. In soccer, there are passes made that might get you injured.  In rugby, there are passes that take you straight to the hospital. This BPS is essentially the admission pass to the fiscal ICU/HDU ward that will bed down Kenya’s 5^th President.

Here’s a quick summative briefing for Kenya’s 5^th from the 154-page document not yet in the public domain.

You will inherit a faltering Big Four Agenda that requires devolution but is nowhere close to being devolved.  The numbers are not particularly specific, but you will be lucky to be running with anything close to Sh 100 billion in a close to four trillion budget including debt redemptions.

You will also inherit a high-risk debt climate that seeks the fifth Eurobond in ten years. There is a movie called “Other Peoples’ Money” that may guide your understanding of this scandalous state of affairs.

You will inherit a project portfolio that is completely un-progammed.  At the national level, you might start with World Bank estimates of 4,000 projects.  Multiply that by three to five times for counties.  Every project created by the government – national or county – is now “our turn to eat”. No bake, just cake!

You will discover that national security (military plus intelligence) costs Sh 200 billion in your first year. The question will not be why, or what, but when this blunderbuss of bloat happened in plain sight.

At which point the hard truth, not fake campaign promise will emerge. In 2022/23 government will cost (excluding debt redemption) Sh3.3 trillion. The national government will account for two trillion.

Revenue raised is, according to the mandarins, supposed to increase to Sh2.4 trillion.  Not to forget, our debt is heading to eight trillion, before looking at parastatal guaranteed loans and PPP contingent liabilities.

Here’s the short story.  In order to run government, you will need to tax us more or service us less.

Which brings us back to the longer sporting story from whence we begun. 

Did our current President just throw his successor a  “suicide pass”?