Open Letter to a Nation Led by Transaction: How Kenya Sold Its Soul to the Highest Bidder

Dear Kenya,

There comes a time in every nation’s life when the mirror cracks — not because it is old, but because the face it reflects is too grotesque to behold. We, Kenyans, have reached that moment. We stare into the mirror of our democracy and see not citizens, but commodities. Not leaders, but auctioneers. Not a nation, but a marketplace of betrayal.

Octavia Butler once warned that to be led by a coward is to be controlled by what that coward fears; to be led by a fool is to be ruled by those who manipulate him; to be led by a thief is to surrender your treasures; and to be led by a liar is to be fed on poison. Kenya, you did not choose one — you chose all four, neatly wrapped in a suit and Bible verses.

We have become the case study of how democracy dies — not with soldiers at the gates, but with voters selling their conscience at the polling station. Our tragedy is not just political; it is moral, spiritual, and intellectual rot disguised as faith and hustler slogans.

The 5th President of the Republic perfected something more dangerous than dictatorship — transactional democracy. In this new gospel, the ballot is no longer sacred; it’s a price tag. Leadership is no longer a calling; it’s a commercial tender. Citizenship is no longer belonging; it’s a liability to be taxed, silenced, and milked dry.

The hustler nation sold us the gospel of upliftment, but delivered the mathematics of plunder. They called it bottom-up economics. They forgot to tell us that the only thing going up would be prices, taxes, and lies — and the only thing going down would be our patience, dignity, and hope.

We are now governed by brokers of faith and merchants of deceit. Men who baptize corruption with holy water and auction the nation’s conscience at Sunday crusades. Every sermon is a campaign, every prayer a policy.

When you hear the word “empowerment,” hide your wallet. When you hear “inclusion,” check your taxes. When you hear “digital transformation,” prepare for another tenderpreneur in a hoodie selling us Chinese software at triple price.

The President once accused Kenyans of not understanding why the cost of living is high. Sir, with due respect, we understand perfectly well — it’s because thieves are expensive to maintain. It costs a fortune to feed the greed of men who confuse government with personal business, and who see the budget as an ATM for their allies and mistresses.

Kenya is now a country where leaders talk about God by day and wire millions to Dubai by night. They kneel in prayer but rise in procurement. They preach morality but practice monopoly. They sing hymns while signing heists.

When we speak of corruption, we are not describing a crime anymore — we are describing a culture, a creed, an economy. Corruption is our unofficial national language, our real religion, and our most efficient export.

More than sixty percent of our leaders are walking case files — indicted in spirit, protected in law. Money launderers, scammers, tax evaders, and witch doctors, parading as statesmen. They hold conferences to discuss morality while their offshore accounts hum louder than the national anthem.

The Constitution, once our covenant, has been turned into wrapping paper for illegal deals. Chapter Six on integrity lies bleeding in ICU, while Article 10 on values and good governance was buried in a mass grave next to public trust.

We have no functioning Parliament — just a syndicate of rent-seekers auctioning their loyalty at every sitting. No functioning opposition — just bargaining chips waiting for an appointment. No independent judiciary — just clerks of the Executive’s ego.

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Every institution meant to check power now bends at its knee of it. The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission is the national museum of unprosecuted scandals. The DCI is a circus tent. The Auditor-General is Cassandra — forever right, forever ignored.

Meanwhile, the citizen has become the most taxed yet least protected creature in Africa. Our taxes now fund luxury for the few and misery for the many. Every new levy is baptized in economic jargon but delivered in political vengeance.

We are now taxed for existing, taxed for breathing, taxed for dreaming. The Finance Act is no longer a fiscal plan; it’s a ransom note.

The government blames the previous regime as if Uhuru Kenyatta’s ghost still signs tenders at State House. When that excuse expires, they blame Raila Odinga. When even that fails, they blame the devil. What they never blame is their own incompetence.

This administration behaves like a driver who blames the car for every accident but refuses to admit he is drunk.

They talk about fiscal discipline while living on borrowed billions. They preach about job creation while killing industries with taxes. They speak of foreign investment while scaring away local entrepreneurs with bureaucratic blackmail.

Manufacturing? Dead. Agriculture? Dying. Tourism? Over-taxed. SMEs? Over-regulated. Yet every weekend they shout “Kenya is open for business!” — yes, open for looting, for exploitation, for every corrupt deal dressed as development.

President Ruto’s government has mastered one thing — political theatre. Every day is a performance. Every speech a distraction. Every crisis is a campaign.

When citizens protest, they are branded traitors. When journalists question, they are called cartels. When the youth demand jobs, they are told to pray harder. When they pray, they are told to pay taxes.

This is not leadership. It is a psychological operation — a deliberate attempt to wear down the citizen until silence feels patriotic.

The tragedy of Kenya is that the people have become too exhausted to be angry. The cost of living has numbed our tongues, and the cost of truth has made cowards of even the brave.

We are living through the industrialization of poverty. Every policy feels like a tax. Every project feels like a scheme. Every promise feels like foreplay before betrayal.

When Suzy Kassem wrote that true leadership is about building bridges, not walls; books, not weapons; morality, not corruption — she wasn’t writing about us. Kenya builds walls of lies, prints books of propaganda, and manufactures corruption as its chief export.

Our President has turned governance into a financial model — loyalty yields interest, dissent incurs penalties, and justice is a premium service. The new national curriculum is “How to Survive Transactional Democracy 101.”

We now measure patriotism not by service but by silence. The louder the praise, the fatter the tender.

Even religion has been nationalized. Churches are now procurement centers. Bishops are tender agents. The Holy Spirit has been replaced by government grants.

The so-called hustler nation has become a hustled nation — hustled by tax, by deceit, by propaganda, and by the sacred art of emotional manipulation.

Transactional democracy does not require ideas — it only requires greed. It rewards mediocrity and punishes morality. It promotes thieves to power and demotes thinkers to poverty.

And so, the men and women who once could have saved this country are now exiled in silence, while the loudest mouths dine with power, and the smartest minds are unemployed.

Our Parliament now passes bills like a conveyor belt — blindfolded, bribed, and brainless. MPs no longer represent constituencies; they represent their wallets. Senators no longer defend devolution; they defend allowances.

Every time they stand to speak, the taxpayer loses another shilling of hope.

The government’s obsession with raising taxes is not economic policy — it is kleptomania disguised as revenue mobilization. You cannot tax a nation into prosperity any more than you can steal your way into heaven.

They say they want to broaden the tax base. What they really want is to bury the citizens deeper.

They say they want to cut debt. What they really want is to borrow again — because in Kenya, loans are not for development, they are for re-election.

Every new borrowing spree is a love letter to corruption — signed, sealed, and delivered by the Treasury.

When confronted with reality, they retreat into biblical quotes and economic jargon. But no verse can cleanse theft, and no model can justify madness.

The truth is simple: Kenya is not poor. Kenya is being looted in broad daylight by men who confuse statecraft with personal hustle.

Our leaders are not short of ideas — they are allergic to integrity. They prefer lies because lies pay better.

Every citizen now lives one emergency away from despair. Hospitals without medicine, schools without teachers, farms without subsidies, and streets without safety. Yet the government tells us to be patient — as if patience is a policy.

They ask for faith while auctioning our future. They ask for unity while sowing division. They ask for sacrifice while feasting on luxury.

This regime is a paradox — preaching morality while institutionalizing immorality, quoting the Bible while breaking the law, promising inclusion while excluding competence.

And yet, Kenyans keep clapping. We cheer our abusers because they come bearing flags and hashtags.

We have normalized absurdity. We have baptized theft as smartness. We have confused arrogance for confidence. We have mistaken oppression for order.

Kenya, our problem is not just the leaders we elect — it’s the citizens we’ve become. We’ve learned to survive under bad governance instead of fighting to end it. We’ve built resilience where we should have built resistance.

The youth, once our hope, now rent their voices to the highest bidder. The middle class tweets their anger over cappuccinos, then files tax returns to the same thieves. The poor, betrayed, and hungry are bribed to repeat the cycle.

We have turned protest into performance, and accountability into content.

The result? A country running on autopilot, captained by men allergic to truth and addicted to applause.

But history is cruel to pretenders. Transactional democracy always ends the same way — in economic collapse, public rage, and the inevitable fall of the fraudsters who thought themselves immortal.

Kenya is not doomed, but it is diseased. And until we treat the infection of transactional politics, every election will simply be a reshuffling of thieves.

One day, the bill for all this will arrive — not in Parliament, but in the streets. And no amount of police tear gas will be able to suppress the hunger of a people who finally realize they’ve been robbed blind.

When that day comes, Kenya will either be reborn or buried. And may God, if He still listens to us, forgive this republic for selling its soul so cheaply.

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