President William Ruto’s unveiling of a roadmap towards Kenya’s next long-term development plan has ignited the expected level of debate. Unfortunately, it has been low-level discussion unworthy even of a high school debating club.

Opposition politicians, without even the slightest pretence of having listened to the president, have dismissed the plan out of hand. Their pro-government counterparts, also out of reflex reaction and unthinking political loyalty, have in turn backed to the hilt a plan they have not read.

And that is it: Nobody has read the plan. When the president called a special prime-time televised address to the nation last Thursday, it was not to unveil what is already being dubbed “Vision 2060”, but to announce the launch, in a fortnight, of a national conversation on the county’s development path after Vision 2030, which still has four years to run.

The timing of President Ruto’s announcement was interesting, seeing as he has, of late, been more preoccupied with advance campaigns one year before elections that will determine if he earns a second term in office.

It was therefore not surprising that detractors read politics into his unusual special announcement, maybe a diversionary tactic at a time the fractures in his governing coalition over the running-mate for next year are coming to the fore.

Simply announcing commencement of a public discourse two weeks ago hardly rated the special televised address to the nation. To that extent, whatever he pronounced, to borrow from President Ruto’s own terminology, could uncharitably be dismissed as little more than “kizungu minzi na catwalk”.

Wild exaggeration

Yet a closer look might reveal he is on to something, though likening the coming national debate on the “People-driven National Development Charter” as the most impactful national undertaking since enactment of the 2010 Constitution might be a very wild exaggeration.

A Constitution is written in stone, a document that cannot be changed except through a very elaborate process, and which is deliberately designed to survive regime change.

A development plan, by contrast, represents just the priorities of those in power. President Mwai Kibaki’s Vision 2030 plan launched in 2008 survived both the Uhuru Kenyatta and Ruto regimes, but it is also a fact that each successive administration moved to impose its own set of goals and priorities on the development agenda. Much of the tinkering was actually for self-gratification, given each leader's obsession with personal legacy projects.

To his credit, however, President Ruto has assembled a top-notch team to drive his vision. He has borrowed some of the key brains behind Vision 2030 and the overall economic rescue package that pulled Kenya from the doldrums once President Kibaki succeeded President Daniel arap Moi in 2002.

Independent experts like Kisumu Governor Peter Anyang’ Nyongo, University of Nairobi social development gurus Prof Michael Chege, Prof Karuti Kanyinga and Prof Peter Wanyande, and Japanese economic adviser Prof Hiroyuki Hino, can do a credible job free of the political machinations that would come into play if the process was left to the usual praise and worship political choirs, or State House economic advisers who too often seem only to look out for their own stomachs.

The national address last Thursday had been preceded nine days earlier by a more low-key event at State House, where the team led by Prof Ny’ongo presented an initial document on strategic guidelines towards First World status.

Inclusivity and unity

During the occasion, the president revealed that he had consulted his predecessor, Uhuru Kenyatta, and the former opposition chieftain Raila Odinga (now deceased), reaching concurrence that no nation can develop without inclusivity and unity. It would seem, however, that he consulted leaders of the past, rather than present day opposition leaders such as Wiper leader Kalonzo Musyoka, former Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i, Nairobi Senator Edward Sifuna and former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua.

That oversight or snub would explain the outright rejection from the opposition side. The coming dialogue might thus turn out to be a Kenya Kwanza affair rather than a national process.

If the push to economic transformation can be described as the “Road to Singapore”, President Ruto undermines his own development agenda by actively sabotaging democracy and the rule of law. Unchecked corruption, coupled with the use of police and armed goons to harass, intimidate, abduct, torture and kill real and imagined political foes, will never lead to First World status.

Without constitutionalism, democracy, human rights, good governance, transparency and zero-tolerance to corruption being essential elements of the plan, President Ruto’s roadmap to an advanced economy is DOA.

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Mr Gaitho, an independent journalist, is former NMG Managing Editor for Special Projects. gaithomail@gmail.com