We don’t need constitutional change to fix our economy

There must be a way to digitise government and upgrade skills without sacking people. FILE PHOTO | NMG 

By DENNIS KABAARA
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Summary

• The economy is not built on the constitution, but constitutionalism promotes a successful economy.

July’s edition of the Africa Report, a magazine I enjoy, identified seven Kenyans in its first-ever list of the 100 most influential Africans today. The good news is that none of them are politicians, though a couple are closely related to our senior politicos.

For the record, Aliko Dangote, Elon Musk and Koos Bekker (think DStv plus more) lead the hit parade.

The sad news for us is there are African politicians in this “Top 100” list, and we missed the boat. Better is that the Kenyans on that list are young, creative, innovative people who deliver. Actually, they confirm an important lesson I was once taught in creative work – “Listen. Think and Consult. Act”.

I could stop this article here. But there is more. Because Kenya doesn’t do issues, we do drama. Our latest episode is a growing debate over whether or not we should amend a constitution we haven’t fully implemented. Wasn’t this the best constitution in the world; an advisory to “take us to Canaan”?

What changed? What we know is that our great constitution, if properly and fully implemented, would have rubbished “Punguza Mizigo” (PM), and returned “Building Bridges” (BBI) to its quiet place on Mars.

With a census beginning tomorrow that might, with vision, have been register-based (the original point of “Huduma Namba”) and statistically credible, and not another intrusion into our privacy with minimal translation into development results (2009 census, anyone?), what next must Kenyans expect?

Well, when we step away from “Red Meat Hell” and “Rivers of Poison” (the result of policy un-choices, not lack of implementation), then it’s good to ask again how PM or BBI add “safe ugali to clean sufurias”.

That’s why a June World Bank Group report on public tax and spend should interest us. It is clearly written in the context of a government that refutes rational economic policy, so development partners use our discombobulated fiscus to discern our “rationale enim est consilium” (decision rationale).

Meanwhile business corporates, as opposed to private sector, probably regret taking sides and finding that the winning political team is losing them more jobs. It’s not digitisation, it’s falling revenue, profit and cash flow; erm, consumer demand?. Private sector (the rest of us) sustains economy activity while lacking self-sustenance.

The World Bank report was titled Kenya Public Expenditure Analysis 2019: Creating fiscal Space to deliver the Big 4 while undertaking a needed fiscal consolidation. It was clearly an advisory to government before the budget was read.

The Business Daily has already done an incredible job summing the report’s key highlights.

But, what if the report had been titled Applying smart public policy towards creating the fiscal space needed to deliver the Constitution’s promise to Kenyans. Then we might have had a discussion.

At basics, we don’t mobilise enough tax revenue because we don’t know how that money might be used. That’s the “no taxation without representation” concept that our constitution demands. It isn’t technical.

The tax base isn’t large enough because we conflate “corporates” with “private sector”, and can’t figure how to create “good jobs”. The policy difference is one between “pro-business (big business)” and “pro-markets (consumers)”. That’s not a constitutional issue either. “Bad jobs” can’t pay taxes.

On spending, we don’t get full value from public service. This is the result of a nasty “combo” of over-staffing and “under-work” leading to half-baked service. It’s clear and present in all of Kenya’s 48 governments.

There must be a way to digitise government and upgrade skills without sacking people. None of this needs constitutional change. And debt is a choice, on which we have been terribly reckless.

The economy is not built on the constitution, but constitutionalism promotes a successful economy. So, many or most of the BBI proposals could be fixed if we simply implemented the constitution, properly.

The real point is even government’s current Big 4 agenda is neither clever nor unique. It already resides in Article 43 constitutional demands. Good infrastructure, people and systems were the enablers.

Which suggests that endless projects outside programmes that are not anchored in the constitution as a policy document are schemes of theft. Any serious government knows this, numbers notwithstanding.

The elite shall change the constitution at their risk. The people still await a constitution that works.

At bottom, the constitution demands that President Kenyatta’s job was to create (because we aren’t) or sustain (if we were) a Kenya for all Kenyans - and all in Kenya.

There’s no fancy legacy, it’s about implementing the basics. We call it the constitution. Enough already.