Kenyan
JF-Expert Member
- Jun 7, 2012
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By JAINDI KISERO | The Nation | Feb 26, 2013
In terms of the economy, the main talking point in the last presidential debate was the minimum wage.
The debate left out the relevant and pressing economic issues of the day.
I had wanted to hear the candidates discuss the deteriorating state of government finances public debt, a recurrent cost financing crisis, the widening current account deficit, and the size of the budget deficit.
What are the presidential candidates planning to do to return Kenya to the growth path that was interrupted by the post-election violence when the economy grew by 7 per cent in 2007?
Infrastructure should have been a major talking point. Even on the matter of the minimum wages, the debate produced more heat than light.
Clearly, the presidential candidates did not want to commit themselves to any specific position on this critical question.
I wanted to see a presidential candidate sticking out his or her neck and promising to abolish the minimum wage altogether.
The truth is that in an economy that long embraced liberalisation, and having committed itself to rolling back the frontiers of big government, the minimum wage is an anachronism.
The concept is as archaic as price controls, foreign exchange allocation committees and State-owned commodity marketing boards.
Every Labour Day, the practice is for the government to adjust the minimum wage. But in reality, it is an irrelevance.
If you study most collective bargaining agreements today, you will discover that the average wages negotiated within the scope of the agreements are way higher than the minimum wage.
Why do you want to control wages even after liberalising retrenchment? In a context of a stagnating formal wage sector, shrinking trade union membership, an expanding informal sector, and a booming medium- and small-enterprises sector in which there are no unions, does it make sense to maintain a minimum wage?
On the flip side, I wanted to hear from a defender of the minimum wage prepared to argue that the system must be strengthened to better insulate the incomes of the lowly-paid workers from ravaging inflation. Do we still have any social democrats left in this country?
The segment of the presidential debate on corruption was even more disappointing. It was more about scandal-mongering than an attempt to hold leaders to account. They threw mud at each other as though it was a race to determine who was the most corrupt.
When you let leaders trade allegations and accuse each other of corruption in the manner they did, you allow fudging of responsibility and make it impossible to pin down any of them on culpability.
Scandal-mongering by politicians is what has fed public cynicism and made it impossible for us to come up with a workable anti-corruption strategy.
When you try to pin a politician down on an allegation you cant prove, you encourage dishonesty and deception which, in turn, fuels even more suspicion and cynicism.
My final point on the debate is the following. It should have allocated more time for a discussion on infrastructure.
Indeed, the next president is going to inherit a bagful of multi-billion shilling infrastructure projects that are in various stages of implementation.
I will mention just a few exciting ones. Recently, we signed a commercial contract with Chinese contractors and financiers to build for us a new 1,200-km standard gauge railway line from Mombasa to Kampala.
We are building 612 kilometres of a 500 kilovolt line through Ethiopia to Kenya at a cost of Sh65 billion.
We are building a completely new airport, and a new pipeline between Eldoret and Kampala. Then we have the group of projects known as the Lamu Corridor.
We need a president who keeps his or her eyes on the ball. There is no alternative to sustainable growth.
In terms of the economy, the main talking point in the last presidential debate was the minimum wage.
The debate left out the relevant and pressing economic issues of the day.
I had wanted to hear the candidates discuss the deteriorating state of government finances public debt, a recurrent cost financing crisis, the widening current account deficit, and the size of the budget deficit.
What are the presidential candidates planning to do to return Kenya to the growth path that was interrupted by the post-election violence when the economy grew by 7 per cent in 2007?
Infrastructure should have been a major talking point. Even on the matter of the minimum wages, the debate produced more heat than light.
Clearly, the presidential candidates did not want to commit themselves to any specific position on this critical question.
I wanted to see a presidential candidate sticking out his or her neck and promising to abolish the minimum wage altogether.
The truth is that in an economy that long embraced liberalisation, and having committed itself to rolling back the frontiers of big government, the minimum wage is an anachronism.
The concept is as archaic as price controls, foreign exchange allocation committees and State-owned commodity marketing boards.
Every Labour Day, the practice is for the government to adjust the minimum wage. But in reality, it is an irrelevance.
If you study most collective bargaining agreements today, you will discover that the average wages negotiated within the scope of the agreements are way higher than the minimum wage.
Why do you want to control wages even after liberalising retrenchment? In a context of a stagnating formal wage sector, shrinking trade union membership, an expanding informal sector, and a booming medium- and small-enterprises sector in which there are no unions, does it make sense to maintain a minimum wage?
On the flip side, I wanted to hear from a defender of the minimum wage prepared to argue that the system must be strengthened to better insulate the incomes of the lowly-paid workers from ravaging inflation. Do we still have any social democrats left in this country?
The segment of the presidential debate on corruption was even more disappointing. It was more about scandal-mongering than an attempt to hold leaders to account. They threw mud at each other as though it was a race to determine who was the most corrupt.
When you let leaders trade allegations and accuse each other of corruption in the manner they did, you allow fudging of responsibility and make it impossible to pin down any of them on culpability.
Scandal-mongering by politicians is what has fed public cynicism and made it impossible for us to come up with a workable anti-corruption strategy.
When you try to pin a politician down on an allegation you cant prove, you encourage dishonesty and deception which, in turn, fuels even more suspicion and cynicism.
My final point on the debate is the following. It should have allocated more time for a discussion on infrastructure.
Indeed, the next president is going to inherit a bagful of multi-billion shilling infrastructure projects that are in various stages of implementation.
I will mention just a few exciting ones. Recently, we signed a commercial contract with Chinese contractors and financiers to build for us a new 1,200-km standard gauge railway line from Mombasa to Kampala.
We are building 612 kilometres of a 500 kilovolt line through Ethiopia to Kenya at a cost of Sh65 billion.
We are building a completely new airport, and a new pipeline between Eldoret and Kampala. Then we have the group of projects known as the Lamu Corridor.
We need a president who keeps his or her eyes on the ball. There is no alternative to sustainable growth.
