SAM’S SENSE: Budget? Let it dance

Last week, National Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi presented his first-ever national budget to the National Assembly - a Ksh.4.29 trillion expenditure plan.

This is the single most important event for any Treasury CS on Parliament’s calendar. It's enshrined in the Standing Orders of the National Assembly - an unmissable statutory appointment.

Yet, on the day, only a handful of MPs - just enough to meet quorum - showed up to listen to the man of the moment. You may ask: where were the rest?

It’s not officially known. But coincidentally, there were several other events, including what is now styled as an “empowerment programme” in Ukambani, led by none other than Deputy President Prof. Kithure Kindiki.

You see, Parliament exists for many reasons—but perhaps most crucially, to appropriate public resources. That is its institutional duty.

So when MPs decide that dancing on a podium and distributing politically charged donations is more important than listening and deliberating on how to share the national cake—it defies logic.

But even putting that aside: does the ritual of budget reading still make sense?

This annual tradition—now officially called the public pronouncement of the budget policy highlights and revenue-raising measures—is merely the climax of a more than a nine-month fiscal planning cycle. It begins with the budget circular, proceeds through the budget outlook, budget policy statement, and culminates in budget estimates ahead of the Appropriations Bill. That’s what gives the CS’s speech legislative weight.

All that happened in 2024.

Then, following the withdrawal of the Finance Bill 2024—thanks to Gen Z-led protests—the President, in a bid to cover the fiscal hole, ordered sweeping amendments to the 2024/2025 budget. Both recurrent and development expenditures were slashed.

But what do we have now?

Three supplementary budgets—Yes, three—have since been introduced. The latest landed just 11 days before the end of the financial year. CS Mbadi spearheaded two of them.

And here’s the twist: most of what was reduced in reaction to the protests has been quietly reinstated—and even topped up. Take the State House budget, for instance. Initially cut by over Ksh.5 billion, it’s now been raised by more than Ksh.7 billion.

All this happened with Parliament's active cooperation. They facilitated these increments—undermining the very logic of expenditure cuts.

Maybe that explains why some MPs prefer the dance floor of a political rally—where they can throw shade at opponents and ride the "empowerment caravan" through the murky terrain of Kenyan politics. Shake a leg, flash a few notes, and walk away to cheers.

And then, a week later, show up in Parliament or not, to skim through a 700-page supplementary budget—reworking what they passed, or rather, rubber-stamped, just 12 months ago.

Where’s the sense?

Where’s the sense of fiscal discipline? Where is the sense of engaging Kenyans in hard, logical conversations about a national budget?

Allow me to get a little technical: Where is the sense in spending countless hours reasoning with the government about the need to rationalize the budget deficit, pursue fiscal consolidation, or improve the revenue-to-GDP ratio?

Why burn all those brain cells trying to understand complex budget lines, when the Executive can and will simply invoke Article 223 of the Constitution to spend outside the budget—then later regularize it through a supplementary bill?

Why bother reading between the lines, if those lines don’t matter? If a single individual—or a few—can rewrite the entire fiscal plan, and still get Parliament’s blessing?

Maybe it really does make more sense to dance. After all, the national budget has its own beat.

Let it dance.

That’s my sense tonight.