President Uhuru Kenyatta with DP William Ruto during Jubilee manifesto launch [Photo/the-star.co.ke]
Political parties have released their manifestos to Kenyans and there are several errors and lies in these documents. Jubilee and NASA are the main players in the August contest and they had colorful ceremonies during the unveiling of their plans for Kenya for the next five years.
One culprit who is misleading innocent Kenyans is the ruling party, Jubilee. Fact Check has revealed that the police-citizen ratio was doctored by Jubilee to suit its 2013 promise.
The Check Point broadcast by KTN stated that the claim that Jubilee has improved the police-citizen ratio has improved beyond the UN benchmark. In this claim, there are two lies; the ratio and existence of a benchmark.
Jubilee’s manifesto said that they inherited a 1:1000 police-citizen ratio but the fact is that they got 1:992 according to reliable sources like Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) that Fact Check used for clarification. The UhuRuto led team noted in the current manifesto that the ratio has improved from 1:500 to 1:400 that surpasses the UN ratio of 1:450. This conflict with what they said in 2013. The current ratio is 1;759 after 5971 regular police officers graduated making a total of 59815 from the sum of 42145 in 2013.
The second politically correct lie is the existence of a standardized UN policing ratio. Policing is dynamic hence population is a necessary factor in deployment but not sufficient to make security conclusions. This concurs with KNBS findings that crime has gone up despite the better ratio.