The Azimio la Umoja One Kenya Alliance presidential candidate Raila Odinga launched his manifesto to Kenyans at an event held at the Nyayo National Stadium on Monday night.
Odinga handlers broke down the manifesto into a 10-point agenda but seriously failed to explain fine details of the projects and how they will be funded at Sh. 400 billion every year and for how many years.
Experts have poked holes on Odinga’s 81 page document as one that is full of qualitative narratives but does not quantify or provide any timelines for the promises made.
Following Jubilee failure to meet its second term promises on the Big 4 Agenda, Azimio is tactically planning to make it be impossible for Kenyans to hold them to account if they win August polls.
Mzee Odinga deliberately failed to give an explanation of where the money to fulfil these promises will come from because he intends to carry on with the culture of the current regime which is crazy on reckless borrowing.
The manifesto is promising to increase allocations to county governments to 35% of shareable revenue. The percentage will translate to KShs 749 billion according to Division of Revenue Bill 2022 where the shareable revenue stands at KShs 2.1 Trillion.
The devolved units are allocated KShs 370 billion but Odinga has no explanation of where the extra KShs 379 billion will come from?
His Inua Jamii project which intends to give KShs 6,000 monthly hand out to 2 million jobless youths will cost Shs 144 Billion annually. Odinga is not clear where that money will come from if not from more debts and heavy taxation on struggling Kenyans.
The Opposition chief also promised that his government will provide free education from ECD to the university. Currently the education budget is Sh 463 billion. The amount is still not enough to run education and employ more teachers to improve learner to teacher ratio.
The Azimio manifesto is blank on the amount it will need to offer free education as they also promise to employ all currently unemployed teachers.
The document Odinga read does not give numbers of the currently unemployed teachers. His team failed to do an assessment to determine the number of teachers needed to fill the gap.
Azimio promises to connect houses to water without giving the number of houses they target to connect, timelines and at what cost. And on Agriculture which is the backbone of the Kenyan economy, Odinga read that he will increase the share of agriculture to 30% of GDP.
The sector’s share to GDP was more than 34% before 2020 when Covid-19 ravaged businesses and the economy.
They have made a commitment to “Implementing minimum guarantee returns to the farmers.” The ODM leader gave this serious promise without quantifying and giving detailed descriptions. Where it’s funding will come from and how they will lower the cost of living.
Odinga went ahead to be trivial with ballooning public debt by thinking that his administration will just restructure the debt and seek debt forgiveness.
REVIEW OF AZIMIO MANIFESTO: 12 DISTURBING ISSUES.
I have just finished reading the 84 page Azimio Manifesto and it is quite underwhelming. It finally confirms my worst fears that the Azimio team is completely clueless on how to address the challenges we are facing.
THREAD 🧵— ephraimnjegafan (@ephraimnjegafan) June 7, 2022
Chama Cha Kazi party leader Moses Kuria, an economist who analyzed the Azimio La Umoja One Kenya Alliance coalition manifesto described it as an unrealistic piece that does not fit the needs of Kenya.
“Just read the Azimio Manifesto. Sweeping generalities. Vague clichés. No metrics, no KPIs, Nothing stretching, nothing measurable, nothing achievable, nothing realistic, nothing time-bound,” Kuria said.
The manifesto further proposes to create a Debt Management Office while one is actually in place but not helping at all. Dealing with debt calls for a need to raise revenues and lower expenditure.
Odinga is racing to beat Kenya Kwanza Alliance candidate Dr. William Ruto who plans to fix the debt ridden economy by creating employment and increasing the tax base.
Dr. Ruto is pushing for adoption of bottom-up economic model which will promote investments of ordinary Kenyans and empower them financially for the country to generate more taxes to spur the economy.
