Blame game rages after Cabinet meeting flops

The weekly Cabinet meeting flopped for the fourth consecutive time on Thursday amid heightened differences between coalition partners PNU and ODM. Ministers were summoned for the meeting around 7am only for them to be informed an hour later that it had been cancelled.

They had been invited through the Cabinet Office, which either called them directly or through their offices. Some of them got the messages through Short Message Service (SMS). However, there was a bone of contention between the Party of National Unity and Orange Democratic Movement ministers on what exactly caused the cancellation of the meeting.

Whereas ODM ministers blamed President Kibaki, who chairs the Cabinet, some PNU colleagues said Prime Minister Raila Odinga had scuttled the meeting because he was unavailable. However, the Head of the Presidential Press Service, Mr Isaiah Kabira, blamed the confusion on “miscommunication from the Cabinet Office”.

He said that the Cabinet meeting called on Thursday was supposed to be held next week and that letters had already been sent out. An ODM minister, who spoke to the Nation and requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter said: “There was no Cabinet meeting scheduled by Wednesday evening, but yesterday morning, we were informed that there was one… but an hour later it was cancelled.”

The minister said some of them were inconvenienced because they had to cancel important duties because of the meeting, only for it to called off. However, a minister allied to PNU, who also asked not to be named, said the meeting was cancelled because Mr Odinga said he would be away.

“I was informed of the Cabinet meeting this morning (Thursday) around 7am, but my office later called me to say the meeting had been cancelled because the Prime Minister was unavailable,” the minister said. The minister said Mr Odinga had written another letter to the President asking that the Permanent Committee on the Management of the Grand Coalition Affairs should meet to iron out issues.

The minister accused the PM of attempting to derail the work of the “Cabinet by replacing it with the committee”. The ODM minister countered the argument, saying Mr Odinga alone could not derail a Cabinet meeting. “He (Mr Odinga) wrote after the standoff last Thursday asking that the committee meets to sort out the issue so that Parliament does not go through another acrimonious debate. The PM wanted the meeting on Monday before Parliament resumed. It had nothing to do with yesterday’s Cabinet meeting.”

And while responding to claims that the PM scuttled Thursday’s meeting, his spokesman said Mr Odinga was informed of the meeting late after he was expected in Kericho to open a school of business studies, whose sponsors had travelled from the United Kingdom. “If the PM had been told earlier, he would have pushed the Kericho event to the afternoon. That is not a boycott. He received the message of the Cabinet meeting through his private secretary through an SMS at 9.30pm,” said spokesman Dennis Onyango.

The PNU wing said there was a lot of pending business because the Cabinet had not met. Members accused Mr Odinga of only engaging in his political agenda. However, Mr Odinga said the Cabinet was free to proceed without him. He took issue with the invitation through SMS, saying a Cabinet meeting was too important and serious an event to be called in such a manner.

Considered inferior

“Cabinet meetings require serious preparations. They are not rubber stamp events or photo sessions. That propaganda against the PM is being spread by practitioners of cheap politics of survival,” said Mr Onyango, quoting Mr Odinga. In Kericho, Mr Odinga said ODM was firmly in government and would resist any unorthodox attempts by PNU to push it out of the coalition.

He said it was unfortunate that a clique of leaders in PNU, who now considered ODM inferior, had forgotten so fast that the Grand Coalition Government was set up to prevent further turmoil following the contested 2007 presidential election results. Two weeks ago, Mr Odinga wrote to the President stressing the need to solve outstanding issues between the coalition partners and implementation of reforms as stated in the National Accord.

He asked the President to postpone the Cabinet meeting and instead convene a session of the coalition committee to resolve thorny issues threatening their unity in government. The President obliged then. It is the fourth time that the meeting to discuss development policy has failed.

Last week, the meeting, usually chaired by President Kibaki at State House, was cancelled at the eleventh hour following the crisis over who between Mr Odinga and Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka should head the House Business Committee. The impasse was resolved on Tuesday when Speaker Kenneth Marende announced that he would take over as interim chairman as the government sorted out itself.

Reports by Njeri Rugene, Lucas Barasa and Simon Siele