Will the Jubilee administration ever forgive Uganda? 

It’s markedly clear when you arrive in Nairobi that change has been on the horizon for some time. An expressway snakes through the city down onto Mombasa road and to the airport. The city’s Uhuru Park is undergoing major renovations, the skyline is beaming with new buildings and the graffiti of the previous roads has been washed away. In its place, the walls are decorated with plants and large posters warning of fines are painted onto them.
The people though are unhappy with these developments. Many curl at the lip when asked about the previous administration. The sentiment is simple; ‘they worked but they stole too and left us in debt’ as my driver tells me on our way into the city. 

The Jubilee government of Uhuru and Ruto rose to power on the back of an ICC indictment. To shore up appeal, Jubilee promised massive investment in the region and at home. They understood the problem to be economic and designed their manifesto in such a way that their big ticket infrastructure would serve to give Kenyan products a life of their own in regional market shelves; the SGR, Roads, interest rate caps; all of them were designed to get Kenyan products everywhere. 
The jubilee 2013 manifesto didn’t hide it; they promised trade with Uganda, South Sudan, Ethiopia etc… 

Two things, however hurt them irretrievably. Whilst Kenyan and Ugandan government officials went to China to negotiate the SGR loans, when the money finally came, Kenya built, Uganda caught a cold. A railway from Mombasa that doesn’t get to Uganda and proceed to South Sudan or DRC would be useless to the Kenyan business community. So, as day followed night, freight teams rejected the SGR and forced Jubilee to pay back debt at a railway that made little to no economic sense. 
But Jubilee had also banked on Kenyan oil to turn around the economy. This saw them dedicate teams towards building a crude oil heated pipeline with Uganda. Just before the project could take off, Uganda caught another cold and announced, rather painfully, that they would take the Tanzanian route. 

I had been in Kenya at the time. There was real raw anger at the decision. Tanzania had come to Museveni with a route, a company to fund it and a more secure landscape. 
The result of Uganda’s cold feet was that Jubilee had to look for money elsewhere and boy did they borrow? 
When they write the epitaph of Jubilee and Uhuru’s political legacy, they will always reserve a line on cold-knife betrayal from friends, just as I’m sure, they’ll play Kenny Rogers ‘The Gambler’, pass around a glass of hard whisky and remind people to know when to fold ‘em, when to walk away and the only time for counting is when the deal is done.