Results of the most recent Gallup poll in Kenya -- conducted between June 19 and July 9, 2008 -- were released to the media on Monday, September 8th. Though the poll covered a fairly wide range of issues, the two leading newspapers ( Daily Nation and The Standard) headlined the poll results with the public's verdict on the President's and the Prime Minister's performance. So let us start with that.
President Kibaki's approval rating stands at only 63%, while Prime Minister Raila Odinga has a rating of 85%. This large, 22 percentage-point, advantage for the PM is surprising only in its magnitude and not in its skew. It reflects the general perception that the PM has been more visibly active in public affairs than the President, since March. The President's laid-back approach to things (all things considered) is well known, if not legendary. Has it not often been claimed that he never found a fence he didn't (wouldn't?) sit on? In the end, though, he seems to always have it (have things go) his way, doesn't he?
In contrast, Raila thrives on media attention, and is patently indefatigable. Moreover, while the President's role is clearly defined in the constitution, so that Kibaki does not have to endeavour to carve a niche for himself, or to prove himself, the PM's role continues to lack clear definition, and one suspects that Raila seeks to define it, in the public's eye, by word and deed -- on a day-to-day basis -- if those (including him!) who should do so constitutionally are dragging their feet.
In the process, though he is supposed to coordinate, he ends up seeming, or falling to the temptation, to take over the roles he was supposed merely to coordinate. He has been learning on-the-job, without much of local experience to draw on. Jomo Kenyatta's 12-month stint in the PM's seat so long ago (from December 12, 1963 to December 12, 1964) has not been much of a help in the absence of written memoirs and in view of the dramatically different or changed circumstances.
He has, in other words, been learning by doing -- and ruffling some feathers in the process. But the public sees all this as hard work. At least two ministers (Uhuru and Mwakwere) and/or their supporters have publicly complained that the PM is encroaching on their ministerial turf. I suspect that several other ministers have had their feathers just as ruffled -- though the public sees all this as whining, and the whining as not being in the public interest. That's just one step away (isn't it?) from being reshuffled, if it were not for the "letter" of the Grand Coalition agreement.
The truth of the matter, however, is that the PM has a habit of appropriating ministers' shine and basking in their limelight -- and he sucks out all the oxygen from the room. And the point is that he should give ministers a chance to get some credit for work well done, for that is a major component of what motivated public servants thrive on. It would be worrisome, long-term, if, in the structure of our politics, the PM should be the only minister who should shine. It would be worrisome because it would distort our politics and the structure of our public administration.
Let us now turn to other issues covered in the poll. When asked to identify "the most pressing problem that the coalition Government must address", the respondents mentioned the following (the figures in parenthesis represent the percentage of all respondents who mentioned a given problem):
Poverty (17%)
Inflation (17%)
Creating Jobs (11%)
Constitutional Reform (9%)
Unemployment (7%)
Resettlement of Internally Displaced Persons (7%)
Land Reform (7%)
Food Shortage (6%)
Education (3%)
Tax Reduction (2%)
Violence (2%)
Insecurity (2%)
Prosecution of Those Implicated in Post-Election Violence (1%)
Health Care (1%)
Road System (1%)
Water (1%)
Electricity (1%)
Other (1%)
Don't Know or No Response (2%).
[The percentages do not add up to 100]
Nominally, then, the top ten problems are: poverty, inflation, an insufficiency of jobs, constitutional reform, unemployment, IDPs, land reform, food shortage, education and taxation. But we need some aggregation here. That is to say, certain problems can be "collapsed" to give us a shorter list.
The need to create jobs arises only because there is unemployment, and when the two problems are combined into one (say, unemployment) we get to (18%). Poverty and unemployment are twins, and these two give us a "super problem" (even before we include food shortage)accounting for 35% of all responses. In a similar vein, the IDP problem is directly intertwined with the land reform problem, violence and insecurity (which are not in the nominal top ten) and the problem of dealing with perpetrators of post-election violence. Taken together, these five problems account for 19% of the responses.
Based on this re-aggregation, we get the following top 5 problems, which account for 86% of all responses:
1. Unemployment and Poverty (35%)
2. Land Reform, IDPs and related Insecurity and Violence (19%)
3. Inflation (17%)
4. Constitutional Reform (9%)
5. Food Insecurity (6%).
It is surprising that the water problem ranks so low. It would likewise be surprising that constitutional reform is among the top five problems, except that, in the eyes of Kenyans, a successfully concluded constitutional reform agenda would provide a consequential answer to two other problems in the top five: Land Reform... (19%) and Food Insecurity (6%). Inflation compounds unemployment and poverty, as well as food insecurity. It is an ever-present challenge to those who must govern -- and to those who struggle the most, daily, against hand-to-mouth existence.
On top of the list of Kenyan's problems "right now", unquestionably and expectedly, are the twin problems of unemployment and poverty (35%). It would have been surprising if the Gallup poll had found otherwise. But, in that case, did the Gallup poll set out to establish the obvious? Far from it. What is important in the poll result is the relative magnitudes of the problems, as seen by Kenyans at this time. So, we now have a kind of baseline, from which we will track future trends. Who knows: the water problem may begin to rise in subsequent polls, and likewise the health problem. On the other hand, the IDP and land reform problems might decline -- but hopefully only in step with their proper resolution, rather than due to official neglect and a diversion of public attention.
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