Reuben Kigame’s Full Manifesto this is What It Entails

PREAMBLE
I, Reuben Kigame Lichete, waiting for justice to be served by the IEBC, to run as an independent presidential candidate hereby solemnly commit myself and my government to this People’s Manifesto as a means of providing servant leadership, guided by the Constitution of Kenya, and by a personal faith in leadership through example.
I issue this Manifesto for the purpose of healing, uniting and building a new, better, prosperous, hopeful, god-fearing and people-respecting nation of Kenya.
So help me God!

OUR PHILOSOPHY
We commit to rebuild Kenya as a united, peaceful, prosperous and godly nation using three pillars which mark our political philosophy:
1. Utu (dignity),
2. Maadili (values) and
3. Maendeleo (development)

UTU
This is the foundation of our government which insists that everyone is made in the image of God and must be respected and treated with dignity at all times regardless of who they are, have or lack. It is built on the African philosophy that believes “I am because we are,” that people come before projects and that to develop the citizen as an individual is the best and fastest way of developing a nation.
In entrenching Utu, our government shall emphasize and promote:
1) Respect of every life from conception to natural death in accordance with Article 26 of our Constitution
2) Protection of the family as the fundamental institution of life.
3) Equality of all citizens and freedom from discrimination as enshrined in Article 27 of our Constitution as well as other provisions of the Bill of Rights.
4) Economic and social rights as enshrined in Article 43 of our Constitution with emphasis on food security, clean water and environment, health, housing, clothes and education.
5) An end to negative ethnicity and profiling, police brutality and extra-judicial killings.
6) An end to the culture of street children and families.

MAADILI
Our government shall seek to undo the destructive culture of mannerlessness, shortcuts, impatience, corruption, impunity and lawlessness. We shall promote the culture of servant leadership by example, transparency, integrity, accountability and the rule of law.
In promoting the culture of values, our government shall:
1) Interview, appoint or hire only people without a record of crime, impunity or corruption.
2) Establish strict checks and balances for all government procurement, management and reporting of projects at national and county levels.
3) Clean up the civil service to rid it of ghost workers, cartels and unqualified staff and set up stricter KPIs and work contracts.
4) Declare Kenya a zero-corruption and impunity society.

MAENDELEO
Our government shall embark on reviving our economy by making all development projects people-centred. Nothing will be done under my government without asking the question, “How will the project directly benefit Mwananchi?”

To Jenga Mkenya we will prioritize the following commitments:
1) Food security
Access to food and water through:
– Dedicating kshs 35 billion in our annual budget to irrigation for food production in the Kulalo-Galana and Turkwell regions.
– Offering an annual fertilizer subsidy of kshs 12 billion to farmers, up from the last financial year’s subsidy of kshs 5.7 billion. This will be distributed through farmers’ societies as well as churches and mosques.
– Eliminating cartels from the Agricultural sector and engaging such middlemen in licensed, government-controlled marketing and distribution units.
– Cleaning up all water bodies and outlawing pollution to the environment.
– Funding existing and new fish farmers and investing in cold rooms and value addition for the blue economy for local consumption and export.
– Investing an annual kshs 15 billion in the meat and dairy industry, focusing on the empowerment of pastoral communities.

2) Accessible health
Access to affordable and quality health by touching on key pillars of health:
On Health Financing:
– Ensuring by Legislative proposal and Executive Action a minimum health allocation for every county in order to guarantee a minimum health standard throughout the country that promotes the dignity of all Kenyans.

– Ring-fencing facility-raised revenue by legislative proposals and executive action, to only be used in enhancing and promotion of health while outlawing the spending of money raised by health institutions in other functions and departments of government.
– Ensuring proportional distribution and balancing of what is contributed to health and what is spent by making NHIF a purely social protection agency for basic health services. Currently private health providers are collectively paid more than public providers yet public providers attend to more people.
– Establishing a harmonized medical scheme to cushion the least-advantaged in the society who cannot afford the national NHIF payments. This will be through a modest tax that goes only to health of the least- advantaged.
– Establishing a pandemic and emergency medical fund for unexpected national medical challenges as well as the funding of medical research.
On Service Delivery:

– Directing emphasis of health programmes on prevention by investing in promotional health services. Utilizing the available expertise trained in Cuba to lead the implementation of family-centred public health system.

– Eliminating all barriers to the establishment of private medical institutions and providing incentives for the importation of medical equipment. Including tax breaks and tax holidays and to scrap multiple licensing requirement by having a unified approval system.
On Human Resource:

– Placing all existing healthcare practitioners and expanding the training of more to join the family health model. Currently, out of the 12,000 registered medical practitioners for example, only about 7,000 are placed and this trend is even worse for the other cadres like nurses. This will end.
– Legislative proposal and Executive Action to enforce a minimum health human resource standard across counties including conditional grants from the National government.
On Supplies and Medicines:
– Reorganizing the role of KEMSA and setting it up to be more accountable, transparent and corruption-free medical management and supplies body.
– Legislative proposal to empower counties in certain circumstances to directly source for drugs and supplies bypassing KEMSA

3) Education
Provision of free primary and high school education and bursaries for all needy college students. This we intend to achieve by taking the following measures:
– Establish daycare centres in every constituency to ensure a safe environment for our young children to ensure mothers can work without worrying about the safety and nurture of their children.
– Institute a government-sponsored lunch programme for all pupils and students in arid and semi-arid areas as well as those in informal settlements.
– Provide free primary and high school education for all children living with disability and invest in the modernization of their education through public-private partnership.
– Expand the capacity of educational institutions by funding the construction of more schools and colleges through public-private partnerships
– Review our education system to harmonize the 8-4-4 system with the recommendations of CBC so that we have a better quality, practical and contextual system.
– Ensure capitation for all our children in school, whether in public or private institutions.
– Involve private institutions more in the selection of students both at high school, Junior Secondary School (JSS) and college level.
– Harmonize and consolidate the training of teachers for special needs education, early years, diploma and degree programmes, and include a compulsory ethics and special needs education for all teacher training programmes.
– Ensure all learners have textbooks regardless of whether they are in private or public institutions.
– Remove all children from the streets and ensure they go to school.
– Pay off existing overdue HELB loans and register anew all needy cases in society.
– Establish an education charity and endowment fund at the office of the president to which individuals, companies and other well-wishers can contribute to for the education of the needy.
– Build more schools in arid and semi-arid areas as a means of opening up the country and eliminating idleness and banditry.
– Ensure recruitment of all currently trained teachers and expand on job training for teachers to align with changing curricula and learner needs.

4) Corruption, impunity and debt management
Management of corruption, impunity, and debt through:
– Stop economic bleeding by ensuring we do not lose money intended for public projects into personal pockets
– Empowering EACC with prosecutorial powers.
– Strengthening our judicial systems through increased funding to speed up investigations.
– Jailing everyone found guilty of engaging in corrupt dealings (petty offenders should be engaged in community service).
– Offering cash rewards to citizens who expose factual graft.
– Providing a 90-day amnesty period for returning of corruption-related proceeds followed by confiscation of assets.
– Increasing systemic surveillance to prevent theft.
– Making all tendering processes public. Having a data bank that is accessible to all Kenyans, making it easier to know who the company owners that won the tender are.
– Employing corruption-free people in government.
– Appointment of a CS for Finance and Government Stewardship.
– Riding the government of debt. The real cure of our debt which now stands at nearly ten trillion is first to stop borrowing altogether, renegotiate our repayment and possible cancellations and then use our expanded economy and tourism in paying off. We can sell our minerals and excess wildlife to repay.
– The cure to our loss of funds which averages 2 billion per day is to employ people with proven values and then broaden our tax collection avenues as well as increase our foreign exchange.
– We will also demand the repatriation of assets held in offshore accounts.

5) Arts, sports and tourism management
Promotion of the arts, sports and tourism through:
– The creation of county talent centres and three regional arts districts, one in Mombasa, another in Nairobi and another in Kisumu.
– Completion of the construction of unfinished sports centres and facilities, restructuring of national sports management bodies and remuneration of different sports heroes.
– Marketing Kenya as the most preferred tourist destination in the region.
– Reorganizing and strengthening our copyright laws and institutions to serve our talented citizens.

6) Environment
The management of our environment and making Kenya green through:
– Increasing our forest cover to 15% in five years
– Cleaning our water bodies including the removal of hyacinth and other wastes.
– Investing in solar and other forms of alternative energy.
– Encouraging a move towards electric cars in a bid to reduce pollution.
– Strengthening NEMA by localizing it and giving it prosecutorial powers.

7) Foreign policy
Strengthening our foreign policy and regional integration for greater security and socio-economic growth through:
– Bringing Somalia, Somaliland and Ethiopia into the East Africa Community in order to manage terrorism, regional conflicts, maritime disputes and other social upheavals.
– Promoting economic and cultural exchange with our neighbours for social cohesion, institutional exchange and job market expansion.
– Encouraging the growth of educational and research cooperation.
– Promoting pan African goals from a regional context.
– Making it easy for the movement of our people across the region.

8 ) Immigration and management of refugee affairs
Managing immigration through:
– We will give immigration a service status with a paramilitary wing to manage borders. This is an essential service that ensures that borders are secure and the flow of people in and out of the country is regulated.
– We will collaborate with companies seeking to invest in Kenya
– Work permits will be categorized to allow for different investors and workers to work in Kenya. We will be guided by the skills that are available and those that are not available.
– A quota system will be developed to allow companies to have predictability as they seek to hire persons with skills not locally available.
– A revamped Kenyanization policy will be codified and made available to citizens and foreign nationals interested.
– The Immigration tribunal will be commissioned. This has stayed as a provision in the Service Act with no action. All disputed decisions will be handled by the tribunal. We wish to see the immigration tribunal function as we see the Tax tribunal operate.
– Citizens will not be required to complete forms when they are renewing passports. Instead, they will have a prepopulated form shared with them on a government portal, for them to update any changes in details such as address then present themselves for photo capture.
– For compliance, immigration audits will be intensified so that as we welcome genuine investors and migrant workers, we also rid the country of irregular migrants. Immigration auditors will mine Form 27 (Employment Report) and visit companies once an audit report is filed.
Managing refugee affairs through:
– Kenya has an international responsibility to process and host refugees. We are committed to the conventions that speak to this reality.
– The Refugee Affairs Secretariat (RAS) will be financed to effectively manage refugees in Kenya.
– RAS will work with UNHCR and IOM to ensure that the expected processes from screening to refugee status will be managed well.

CONCLUSION
The Jenga Mkenya government will commence with the following as soon as we are sworn in:
1) Lower food prices
2) Lower fuel costs
3) Declare Kenya a corruption-free nation with unbearable consequences for anyone found guilty of engaging in the vice.
4) Outlaw abortion except when the mother’s life is in danger in accordance with article 26 of our Constitution.
5) Appoint a government of National Unity representing the various communities and gender, age and disability.
6) Hire 12,000 trained health practitioners within the first 6 months of being in office
7) Embark on a humane process of removing all the children and families from the street and repatriating them to families and/or housing them in government-sponsored institutions and those run by charities.
8 ) Reform the police services to make them people-friendly and to ensure greater competence.
9) Embark on the pacification of conflict-prone regions of Kenya through community-based resolutions as well as the use of our disciplined forces.
10) Reduce VAT to 14% within the first 12 months of being in office.
11) Increase funding to counties up to 25%, and ensure that it is paid regularly on time.
12) Revive our dormant industries and people-centered services.
This is our solemn commitment.

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