YVONNE'S TAKE: Preach water, tax wine

How unfair indeed. Those were the words of Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi defending greater scrutiny over taxpayer information, in an interview on TV47.

And on principle, he is right.

Modern states depend on transparency.

Tax compliance depends on accountability.

Governments everywhere are demanding greater visibility into income, transactions, ownership structures and financial flows.

Increasingly, the Kenyan state knows:

What you earn,

What you spend,

What you import,

What you transfer,

And sometimes even how you live.

The argument is simple:

If people hide financial records, then taxes become harder to collect.

Fair enough.

But perhaps taxpayers are equally entitled to ask:

If citizens are expected to fully disclose to the state, why is the state still reluctant to fully disclose to citizens?

Because some of the biggest financial obligations carried by Kenyan taxpayers remain partially hidden, heavily redacted, delayed, or tied up in court battles over disclosure.

Take the Standard Gauge Railway contracts.

For years, Kenyans have asked to see the agreements behind one of the most expensive infrastructure projects in the country's history, agreements financed by public debt and ultimately repaid by you, the taxpayer. Yet citizens have had to go to court, repeatedly, simply to access documents signed in their own name. Even now, parts of that disclosure process continue to face resistance in court from the government itself.

Then there are the Independent Power Producer agreements.

Every Kenyan feels the cost of electricity. Citizens know every charge on their power bill. But many still do not fully know the agreements behind those charges: capacity payments, take-or-pay clauses, ownership structures, and the long-term obligations taxpayers may ultimately carry.

Questions around those contracts have persisted for years because many of the details only emerge partially, and often after public pressure.

And then came the Adani deals.

The proposed JKIA concession agreement.

The KETRACO transmission line agreement.

Multi-billion shilling arrangements negotiated largely away from public scrutiny, only for citizens to learn more details through court challenges, media investigations and eventually international controversy.

Today, despite the airport deal having been terminated, Kenyans are still confronting questions around what exactly had already been committed, what liabilities may survive cancellation, and whether taxpayers could still shoulder financial consequences arising from termination clauses or compensation negotiations.

And it is not the first time cancelled government projects have still produced costly public obligations.

This year, disclosures showed that taxpayers would pay more than Ksh.4 billion following the cancellation of the Modogashe-Habaswein-Samatar/Rhamu Road annuity project, a project that never materialised, but still left behind termination costs.

While at it, can they make public the securitisation deals? Where is the Ksh.7 of the Road Maintenance Levy Fund going to? Oh, and how about the Rironi-Mau Summit contract?

And we now learn so late in the day that cancelling the Kenya-France deal cost us Ksh.7 billion. Still, no one from government has owned this cost. Not even Parliament has sought the contract or even the clause that burdens the taxpayer to pay billions for what was not delivered.

Or perhaps even the Affordable Housing contracts? Who are the contractors? Who is selling? Who are they selling to?

All these public-private partnership agreements, airport concession discussions, government-to-government infrastructure deals, natural resource agreements, health sector partnerships, sovereign guarantees, and confidential procurement arrangements whose full implications often only become visible years later, sometimes after litigation, controversy or public outrage.

If ordinary citizens are expected to explain their finances down to the last transaction, then surely the state should be as forthcoming with the citizens about: what exactly was signed? On what terms? At what cost? For whose benefit?

And with what long-term consequences?

Because transparency is not a one-way mirror, where citizens are seen clearly by government, while government remains obscured from the very people who fund it.

The government is right to demand honesty from taxpayers.

But taxpayers, too, have a right to honesty from their government.