Mbadi's U-turn: From Ruto's harshest critic to trusted economic voice

Mbadi had criticised the President and his choice of ministers, dismissing the team as “2027 campaign regional managers”. [Photos, Standard]

John Mbadi was a harsh critic of President William Ruto. Perhaps the most memorable moment in opposing the President is his “give Ruto his skunk” remark in Parliament in October 2022, during the debate on Cabinet nominees. 

Today, Mbadi, who has been at the helm of Treasury for nine months, will deliver his Budget Speech in Parliament, defending Ruto’s economic policies.

In addition to breaking down the budget numbers – how much the government plans to spend over  2025/26 financial year and how it will finance these plans – Mbadi will explain why Treasury has denied critical areas adequate funding while continuing to splash billions of shillings on non-essentials while at the same time continuing to incur debt at an alarming rate, including the very expensive eurobonds, despite having run out of room to borrow.

In the October 26, 2022 debate, Mbadi had criticised the President and his choice of ministers, dismissing the team as “2027 campaign regional managers”.

He further took a stab at Ruto as a micromanager, noting that going by the choice of Ruto’s nominees to the Cabinet, he was conveying the message that “he is ready to run the entire government system, machinery and structure from State House using advisors”.

“We have a choice to either reject over 60 per cent of these names or give President Ruto his skunk,” Mbadi said of the nominees.

The irony is that today, he works with the same team of the same men and women who he had vehemently rejected noting that they were “deficient in terms of academic, professional competence, experience and integrity”.

Mr Mbadi, who is an accountant and has previously been the chair of National Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee, was nominated to be a cabinet secretary last July.

Broad-based government

Mbadi, alongside his ODM colleagues Opiyo Wandayi, Wycliffe Oparanya and Hassan Joho, were included in the broad-based Cabinet in an attempt to appease Kenyans. 

While within government, the opposition politicians appear to have fully been co-opted into government and have not pursued justice for the victims of police brutality during the Finance Bill protests or tame violence against Kenyans by police.

They are now fierce defenders of some of Ruto’s policies. 

Mbadi, a long time critic of the country’s tax system, has for instance been explaining why Treasury cannot lower taxes.

“This financial year, we did simulations on how to reduce pay as you earn (Paye) tax and corporation tax but what stopped us… was the failure by KRA to meet revenue collection targets. We thought that as we carried out reforms at KRA, we should not do many things at the same time.

“First, let us see what reforms at KRA will yield, then we can move to the next step of reducing the tax rates,” he said when he appeared at the Senate last week but added that reduction in taxes “is an idea that I support” and that he does “not believe that higher tax rates lead to higher revenues.”

In this year’s Finance Bill, the Treasury has also refrained from proposing higher or new taxes. Many believe that this has been on account of last year’s protests. During the session with the Senate, Edwin Sifuna noted that Treasury had stayed away from tax raising measures because “Gen Zs had struck fear of god in government”, which Mbadi noted was “partly true”. 

“We have not made major changes in taxes that would disadvantage the taxpayer in terms of reducing their disposable income… and this was commitment by the government,” said Mbadi.

The Finance Bill 2025 is however still unsettling for many and has clauses that have many unsettled. These include the proposal to give KRA power to access personal data as well as subjecting essentials such as pharmaceuticals, animal feeds, agricultural inputs and renewable energy inputs to value added tax (VAT). 

On taking over the Treasury docket on August 8, Mbadi had noted that certain clauses contained in the rejected Finance Bill were valuable and progressive for the country’s growth and tax administration and promised to revisit some of them.

Thus, while the government withdrew the Finance Bill 2024, it would later reintroduce some of the clauses in subsequent Bills which later passed through Parliament and signed into law by the President in December 2024. This includes the Tax Laws (Amendment) Act 2024 which had some of the less controversial clauses that were in the rejected finance bill. 

CS Mbadi has also taken to blaming former President Uhuru Kenyatta’s administration for the dire debt situation that Kenya finds itself into. At the same time, he is defending Kenya Kwanza’s appetite for debt, including Eurobonds, with the latest, the $1.5 billion eurobond taken in February when he had firmly settled in office.

“We accept that there are mistakes made previously that have brought us where we are at the moment with high stock of public debt,”Mbadi said on an interview panel with a local media house earlier this week.

“Much as you want to control debt, you cannot service debt and fail to provide services to the people. The role of the government is to balance the two – maintain a reasonable service debt and at the same time control the debt stock.”