Political manifestos must not confuse lofty goals for strategy

The launch of Azimio la umoja one Kenya coalition party’s manifesto and subsequent utterances by their presidential candidate Raila Odinga on mitumba has led to some serious debates across the country pitting mitumba second hand clothes against locally manufactured clothes.

On face value the coalition’s manifesto sounds good and there are certain aspects of it that are indeed well thought through but generally without delving into too much details the manifesto makes grand aspirations that fail to provide necessary empirical evidence as to why certain interventions are proposed and how they will be financed and how the proposed intervention fits within the national strategy as espoused in Vision 2030 and more specifically medium term four.

This opaqueness of the manifesto is the perfect recipe for lack of direction for the economy and inability for electorate to hold political players to account based on their strategic plans espoused in their manifestos.

Strategy is not wishful thinking and  must never be confused with aspirations or objectives, strategy is a set of hard to rescind  choices and explaining what these choices are and why they were made is what political manifestos must communicate to the Kenyan electorate.

Political manifesto is a serious document and forms the basis upon which the electorate makes significant evaluation as to the suitability of any candidate especially the 2022 general election which comes on the backdrop of a turbulent economy underpinned on negative effects of COVID 19, drought (which has hit the agricultural sector and by extension manufacturing among other related sectors), war in Ukraine (which has affected oil, fertiliser, and food prices) among others.

The first port of call for any candidate’s manifesto is a serious evaluation of the current state of play of the economy as espoused by various reports such as; vision 2030, respective economic review by Kenya national bureau of statistics from 2008 to 2022 as well as implementation of vision 2030 through the various medium term plans. Based on this a judgement call must be made and propose changes to based on identified gaps backed by empirical evidence.

It’s always a red flag when you hear political players giving blanked response when hard pressed to explain their manifestos with the popular slogan ‘’Inawezekana’’ or ‘’We have the secret that will be unveiled once elected into office’’. In business school we were taught what doesn’t get measures doesn’t get done.

Manifestos must have an underlying philosophy that sets the pace in terms of economic direction that will guide its implementation. So far Kenya has not had a concrete philosophy which has led to pursuant of competing objectives and sometimes lack of clarity leading to redundancies.

The manifestos must be clear on the themes they want to tackle for example economy, health, education, corruption among others, identify gaps as per current practice or state of play and propose alternative direction backed with empirical evidence.

The Kenyan electorate must learn from past mistakes that if you elect someone based on tribal affiliations whose sole aim is to amass personal wealth, we all suffer the consequences of a badly managed economy.

The book of 1 Timothy 5: 22 says  Do not be too quick  in the laying on of hands and thereby share in the sins of others