Rahm Emanuel, an American politician, once said that a serious crisis shouldn’t go to waste. A crisis presents an opportunity to do things that could not have been done earlier.
Rahm, who is described as a ruthless political player, saw an opportunity in every crisis. With a strong understanding of public sector leadership, he has served inter alia as an adviser to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff, Chicago Mayor and US Ambassador to Japan under President Joe Biden.
It is clear that Rahm’s superior insights about leadership and crisis are resourceful. The time is now ripe to convert the Kenyan crisis into an opportunity for implementation. Kenya faces an implementation crisis. Kenyan youth have raised pertinent issues around national and public interests that are captured in many reports. The NADCO report, in good part, captures issues raised by Gen Z, among other key stakeholders.
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What Kenya now needs is a multi-disciplinary, multi-generational and multi-economic strata conversation to develop a priority implementation matrix given the tight fiscal space. While the challenges facing Kenya are largely historical and around Kenya’s monetary and fiscal policies, the matter of employment and wealth creation stands out.
That is why public and private sector leaders and stakeholders must hold court with scholars and practitioners to identify with military precision structural and systemic problems inhibiting implementation and prescribe a sustainable solution sensitive to both national and public interests.
Failure to develop an all-inclusive implementation matrix means that protests will be a regular occurrence. One can predict that failure to prioritise youth economics in the implementation matrix is a threat to Kenya’s political and economic stability.
Kenyan youth are alive to the nexus between meritocratic leadership and employment and wealth creation opportunities. The 2024 demonstrations around opposition to the 2024/5 Finance Bill, police brutality, unacceptable loss of lives and destruction of property have morphed into a multi-generational demand for citizen-centric working systems and infrastructure.
Kenya faces a representation crisis where the majority of people believe that elected leaders’ interests are not aligned with national and public interests. That is why they are treating with suspicion some of the proposed solutions as presented by politicians.
This is exacerbated by a primitive display of opulence and a lack of emotional intelligence. It is former British High Commissioner to Kenya Edward Clay who once accused the government of arrogance, greed and corruption. He said, “Their gluttony causes them to vomit all over our shoes”.
Elected leaders must demonstrate that they are serving Kenya. Failure to do so will make Kenyans conclude that politicians want to use the proposed national conversation as a 2027 campaign tool.
We have witnessed politicians take advantage of every opportunity as a campaign tool. They make populist statements knowing very well that implementing such populist statements is a tall order.
Time is now ripe for Kenya to develop a huge appetite for both democratic meritocracy and non-democratic meritocracy as a strategy for policy implementation. Countries that are hitting the high notes have placed a huge premium on meritocracy.
Mr Mokua is a political analyst.
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By Dismas Mokua