YVONNE'S TAKE: An Accountant vs School Dropouts

Yet increasingly, one gets the uneasy sense that those who wield power see it differently, as an obstacle to navigate, or worse, an irritation to endure.

Consider the recent co-operation agreement between the national government and the Nairobi County Government. A significant arrangement affecting millions of residents of the capital city.

It was signed with great fanfare at State House, of all places. Only afterwards did we hear that public participation would follow.

But logically, should it not be the other way around?

Public participation is meant to inform decisions, not ratify them after the fact. Because if the residents of Nairobi, the people whose lives will be affected by such an agreement were to say they do not support it, then what?

Does the government unwind a deal already signed?

Kenya’s courts have confronted this issue many times, and their message has been unmistakable.

In 2024, the High Court declared the Privatisation Act, 2023 unconstitutional, halting plans to privatise several state assets. The court found that the law failed the test of meaningful public participation, both in its quality and its reach.

In another decision, the courts made it even clearer. Public participation, they said, must be “real and not illusory… not a cosmetic or public relations act.”

Not cosmetic.

Not public relations.

Not a formality.

But perhaps the deeper issue here is not procedural. Perhaps it is philosophical.

Because beyond the legal requirement lies a troubling pattern in the way questions from citizens are treated.

Recently, during a television talk show, a host questioned the government’s development record against its campaign promises.

Instead of addressing the substance of the question, the response was dismissive. The host, viewers were told, simply did not know how to read the manifesto. Officials would “teach him how to read manifestoes.”

Yet during that same discussion it became clear that the specific issue being debated was not specifically mentioned in the manifesto itself.

It was not clarification.

It was condescending.

Then there is the recent Kenya Pipeline Company IPO, which struggled to attract some investors. Retail investors stayed away. Foreign investors stayed away as well.

But the explanation offered was curious.

Foreign investors, we were told, had been frightened off by Kenyans questioning the deal. Apparently they were not concerned with the valuation, or the books, or the fundamentals that investors normally examine.

The problem, we were told, was that Kenyans talk too much.

One minister went further, lamenting what he described as a country full of “armchair experts,” who question everything, even primary school dropouts.

It is a remarkable way for a government to speak about its own citizens.

And this tone is not entirely new. Even senior advisors have sometimes responded to criticism with open disdain. On social media, one former presidential economic advisor once dismissed critics bluntly, “If you are ignorant, keep quiet and learn.”

That posture, the assumption that those in power understand and the public does not, sits uneasily with the spirit of Kenya’s Constitution.

Public participation is embedded not merely as a process but as a principle. Article 10 lists participation of the people among the national values and principles of governance binding on all state organs and public officers whenever they make or implement public policy decisions.

The Constitution recognises a simple truth, government power is not self-justifying.

It must be exercised with the consent and involvement of the people.

Public participation exists precisely to prevent governance from collapsing into a small circle of decision-makers who believe they know better than everyone else. It redistributes power outward, away from boardrooms and cabinet tables, back to the citizens whose lives are shaped by those decisions.

It is not always neat.

It is not always comfortable.

But democracy rarely is.

And if those in power find the Constitution an inconvenient guide, perhaps they might turn to something they invoke far more often, spiritual wisdom.

The Desiderata offers a simple reminder, “Listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.”

Because in a democracy, the people are not an obstacle to governance.

They are the reason for it.