Amani National Congress (ANC) party leader Musalia Mudavadi has asked President Uhuru Kenyatta to step aside and call for elections to pave way for capable leaders to stabilise the country.
Mudavadi said the economy was now driven through “habitual management by default” and there is widespread corruption driven by unaccountable officers.
“I am telling the inept government of Kenya: You can fool some people most of the time, but you can’t lie to everybody all the time. The least you can do is admit you don’t know what you’re doing and pave way for those capable,” he said.
The ANC leader made the remarks yesterday when he addressed the Annual General Meeting of Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET), Vihiga branch at Friends College Kaimosi.
The former Deputy Prime Minister said the government was facing a serious disconnect between its fiscal and monetary policies leading to cash flow problems and allowing President Kenyatta to finish his term would be throwing the country into greater confusion.
Mudavadi said the Eurobond saga was an exercise in contempt of public accountability.
“When the economy is tipping; there is a cash crunch and government cannot raise salaries; interest rates and inflation is high; people are losing savings at the stock exchange and cannot repay loans; when the cost of living has sky-rocketed, then something is wrong,” said Mudavadi.
He added, “And when government cannot account for what it did with the Eurobond money, the same government has the audacity and nerve to shamelessly take us for fools.
It then mocks us that all is well; ‘we spent the money to spur the economy, reduce inflation and cost of borrowing; so pay more taxes on juice’.” Mudavadi said he steered the country through the tumultuous 1990s when it had been made a pariah as a result of Goldenberg looting. “I got us moving again from the doldrums through major economic reforms. It is clear the infectious ‘bug’ is biting us all over again. As teachers, parents and Kenyans, you have two choices to make come 2017:
You can choose my team to restore sanity and give Kenyans a decent life because I know what to do or choose an incompetent Jubilee or a decaying CORD,” he said. He said the appetite to consume by the government without investing in production is a major contribution to the failing economy and called for suspension of some development projects. Mudavadi asked teachers to use their numbers to influence major decisions in the country by electing better leaders.
Teachers hold a special place in society. They are not just the income elite and investors that underpin the local economy, but more so the moral fibre and development voice in society. In their hands, the destiny of our country is moulded,” he said.
He said the symbiotic relationship between teachers, the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) and the government has not worked in the recent past, forcing them to resort to industrial action.
“In this confrontation, matters of quality education have taken a back seat. The government finds it difficult to ask the teacher why education performance is failing without blaming the teacher for what is wrong,” he said.
The ANC leader asked the government to obey the court order and increase teachers pay. “The issue of TSC refusing to remit union dues under the pretext that it’s doing a payroll audit would be laughable if it were not tragic. If TSC isn’t lying, why not pay the dues and deduct any over payment to unions in later remittances?” he posed.
He said Government’s disregard for court orders was brazen autocracy that a democratic country cannot afford.
Mudavadi noted that the education sector was in a shambles, from Early Childhood Development to university, where systems have broken down, yet the government, instead of addressing the meltdown, has chosen the easy road of window dressing.
“Through attempts at damage control, impunity has driven the government to break every law and thrown management of education into disrepute. The result is that education policies are being made on a daily basis at the whim of individuals,” he said.
Mudavadi said the problems in the education sector and the Kenya National Examination Council’s (Knec) denial of exam leakage amounts to a government that is sabotaging human resources development.
“It is destroying a generation, discrediting the legitimacy and credibility of education and its certification among Kenyans and abroad and reducing Kenyans’ competitiveness in accessing employment. Given the massive leakage reported this year, I request Members of Parliament to urgently amend the Knec law to make the council accountable to Kenyans rather than to the Education Cabinet Secretary,” he said.
