Jubilee Party Secretary General Raphael Tuju sarcastically took a swipe at DP William Ruto’s bottom up economy model that is at the center of his 2022 presidential campaign message.
The former Rarieda MP, while addressing participants at an event in Murang’a county, tried to define the bottoms-up economic model in Swahili, and left everyone in stitches.
“This issue of the bottoms-up economy, maybe Peter Kenneth (former presidential candidate and Gatanga MP) you can translate it. What is it in Swahili? Matako juu?” Raphael Tuju said as he exited the podium, leaving the crowd laughing uncontrollably.
William William Ruto’s bottom-up economic approach, whose main thrust is empowering the common man, has attracted a lot of criticism from his political opponents trying to debunk his campaign messaging.
Most like Raphael Tuju have done their best to make the bottoms-up catchphrase look negative or even derogatory.
According to BottomUp.org, a bottom-up economy is a transition from concentrated wealth to worker ownership and community capital.
It is almost the opposite of the trickle-down economic model which states that tax breaks and benefits for corporations and the wealthy will trickle down to everyone else.
William Ruto’s campaign message has centered around empowering the common man hence the term ‘hustler nation’ used by those in his political camp.
When Raila Odinga unleashed his economic framework for Kenyans if elected president in 2022, Ruto’s political corner accused him of copying their idea.
“Raila Odinga has become a person who copies the Deputy President. When he saw that Ruto’s idea has been accepted by Kenyans, he copied it,” said Kimilili MP Didmus Barasa, who is an ally of DP William Ruto.
In Raila Odinga’s economic framework, he also promises to focus on poor Kenyans and to ensure the empowerment of citizens in the rural areas.
This somehow coincides with Ruto’s bottom-up approach which aims at focusing on Small and Medium Enterprises to grow the economy.
After the accusations, Raila Odinga’s camp turned their guns on Ruto, saying he is the one who took the idea from the ODM leader.
The ODM camp said that the bottom-up economy had been highlighted in the NASA coalition manifesto in 2017.
They said that Ruto not only copied the idea but also does not know how to implement it.
“Over a year ago I asked David Ndii to share the bottom-up blueprint and he shared the NASA Manifesto instead,
I do not know why then William Ruto thinks growing the economic capacity of everyday Kenyans is his original idea. You just plagiarised the Nasa Manifesto,” ODM Secretary-general Edwin Sifuna wrote on his Twitter page.
