Rais, you are not on the campaign trail anymore and it is no longer your business to promise us action on this, that or the other. That is what we need to remind our President, ten months after he assumed power in State House and received the Instruments of Power with such colourful pomp and circumstance at teh Moi International Sports Complex at Kasarani.
This is not to say that the Presidency of Uhuru Kenyatta is a never-ending string of promises-yet-to-be-fulfilled; it is far from that. The Galana irrigation project, estimated to provide over 2 million jobs when fully implemented, is not a promise but action on the ground. However, if it is implemented in the same fashion as the free maternity healthcare promise, where babies are born while their mothers are standing, then it is not something he should tom-tom at the moment.
However, this blogger is not here to praise nor to hurl brickbats at the Commander-in-Chief; this blogger has noticed a worrying tendency by the Head of State to make promises: we will do this, we should do this, we are going to do this, we want to do this...it is becoming part of his charming mantra every time a new idea or a new programme catches his fancy. But that is not what heads of government do; they do not promise things. They simply crack the whip and it is done.
If President Kenyatta wants the Ministry of Transport, the National Police Service, the National Transport Safety Authority, the Kenya National Highways Authority and the key stakeholders in the transport-and-roads sector to reduce the deaths and injuries on the nation's highways, he will not promise to take action; he will demand it with the full authority of his office. he will hold accountable the men and women in charge. He will fire the stumbling blocks. He will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law the saboteurs. And he will publicly celebrate the achievement of the men and women who translated his Presidential Decree into Policy and finally into Results.
My President does not need to promise that the war against corruption will be fought and won; all my President needs to do is to demand it. He is the head of the government. He has the right to demand such an outcome. If Mumo Matemu and his fellow commissioners cannot meet the President's demands, they should be sent packing. My President does not need to promise that the Single Gauge Railway will be built; all he has to do is demand that it be built. It is the business of the Ministry, the Cabinet Secretary, the railways corporation and the Attorney-General to see to it that this presidential demand is met. When they embarrass him by playing the same old procurement hide-and-seek games, he has absolutely no reason to retain them in the service of his government. he is well within his powers to ask for their resignations. If they resist him, he must ensure that they go and that they never set foot in the public service ever again.
The time for making promises is over. This is the time to keep the promises that were made during the campaign, not to make new ones. It is not time to seize on every new idea out there. It is only required that the President should direct the machinery of his government to achieving all the ends of his promises. In this, the President need only point his finger for the public service to get to it. The sand in the gears of the machinery of government must be dealt with ruthlessly. They must be purged. In this, the President has the law on his side. If the sand is composed of the corrupt, the perfidious, the lazy, the incompetent, the saboteurs, and the like, he must set the forces of law and order on them. He must have the book thrown at them. He must make them an example and a lesson. In other words, it is his government. It is time he bent it to his will.
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