As a nation on this 12th December 2020, we mark our 57thJamhuri Day on the cusp of the cataclysmic Covid-19 pandemic that has unscrambled, upended, shredded the world including our country’s economy and it continues to disrupt and affect the health of and kill thousands across the globe. Covid-19 has terrorized all of us more than terrorism. It has paralyzed the whole world, rich and poor.
Yes there is hope that the darkest hour of the Covid-19 pandemic is nigh with the rollout of vaccines in the first world but we have to be realistic and practical that indeed that vaccine will reach us in Kenya and other poor countries in the third world last after the first world countries have protected their populations. Our Treasury has no money to purchase vaccines. We are waiting for donors. What a shame? What disgrace? How can we proclaim we are a Jamhuri that can’t treat or afford vaccines for its people?
The lesson from Covid-19 is that it is imperative for you and me and all of us as a nation to remember that we must take care of ourselves as a nation as nobody from beyond our national borders will do so.
The greatest responsibility of taking care of the nation, is placed on the shoulders of those whom by our Constitutional architecture are entrusted with that mandate ‘the elected leaders from the President, the Deputy President, the Senators, the Members of the County Assembly and then all the Public Servants in the three arms of government- the judiciary, the legislatures, the national and County Government.’
Regrettably, sadly, tragically those entrusted to take care of the rest of the citizens have over the years assumed, converted the roles of taking care of the people of the nation, to exclusively taking care of themselves and gobbling up all the tax resources for their comfort, luxuries and with any remaining crumbs then spewed here and there and the loudest noise made as to how they are delivering development.
Jamhuri Day, 57 years since independence is meaningless to the millions of Kenyans who are not public servants and elected leaders as the elected leaders and public servants consume 70% of the nation’s budget on recurrent expenditure (that is themselves) and only 30% is left to be doled amidst corruption as development expenditure for the benefit of the million Kenyans. We are the nation of the greatest robbery of a few from the many.
Yes, Jamhuri Day will only become meaningful to the citizens when 70% of the budget goes to them without any corruption and 30% goes to recurrent expenditure (the 4 Million public servants and elected leaders). We must as a people reclaim our Jamhuri from the parasitic elected leaders and public servants or we are doomed to stew in poverty, disease and ignorance.
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