The honeymoon is over, now the hard part of governing begins

The first 90 days of the Jubilee government have been characterised by the frustratingly slow process of forming the government which is inherent in a presidential system of government.

In a parliamentary system, like the one Kenya had before, the president is free to, and would normally, form government soon after being elected.

However, with parliamentary approvals of presidential appointments, a feature of the political system that we chose, it has been slow for the government to emerge, and even now, three months later, it is yet to be complete. The President, therefore, has ready excuses if he is accused of not performing to the level that may have been expected of his government.

A second feature of the first 90 days of the government is the amount of disharmony that has been evident among key institutions.

There has been infighting between the two chambers of the Legislature, the Senate and the National Assembly, which also drew in President Uhuru Kenyatta, when he signed the Revenue Allocation Bill into law contrary to the wishes of the former House. At the moment a dispute over the legal implications of this situation is pending before the Supreme Court.

Turf wars

There have also been turf wars between the county assemblies and the Executive at the county level. A dimension of this has been the disagreement as to whether there is a role for county commissioners under the new constitutional arrangement.

The President insists there is while the governors think the real intention for the appointment of these commissioners is to make them irrelevant.

At the heart of these wars has been an attempt by each of the concerned institutions to mark territory for itself. Even between the President and the National Assembly, there has been disharmony over issues of pay for the legislators, with Mr Kenyatta making it clear that he does not support the struggle by MPs to award themselves a salary rise.

To his credit President Kenyatta has been clear on this issue, something that his predecessor, Mr Mwai Kibaki, was always unclear about.

The selection of a Cabinet largely made of technocrats, as opposed to politicians, indicates how the new presidency would like to be viewed. In general terms, the new secretaries have been received well by the country.

However, the vetting process in the Jubilee-dominated National Assembly has been rather unsatisfactory and undermines the image that the new government would like to project about itself. Also, the opacity that marred interviews process for principal secretaries has been compounded by the unconvincing legislative vetting process.

National security has been a challenge to the new government. A wave of violence was witnessed in several parts of the country, including Bungoma, Busia, Garissa and Mandera.

While the President has talked tough, and promised forceful disarmament if the fighting in northern Kenya does not end, the police service, the department that would lead the process, remains in disarray, with infighting between the Police Service Commission and the Inspector General of Police, Mr David Kimaiyo.

It is little wonder that Deputy President William Ruto announced that the government had deployed the military to carry out law enforcement duties, ordinarily the work of the police. The deployment of the military to carry out police work, while exposing the military to politicisation, is also an indication that the political leadership has given up on the police.

The issuance of laptops to public primary school children, a signature promise in the Jubilee campaigns, remains something that the new government cannot renege on without significance loss of face.

However, independent analysis shows that the laptop project may achieve nothing more than the self-gratification for the new government to walk the talk of its campaign. The government will have to modify the laptop project to avoid it blowing on its face.

The settling down of the new government has been affected by the cases against the President and his deputy at the International Criminal Court (ICC). The two have made a massive diplomatic investment in their own favour and against the charges.

This began right at their inauguration ceremony where the newly-elected President announced Kenya’s readiness to lead what was couched as an African renaissance but which analysts thought was the bringing together of the continent so that it could support him against the ICC.

Introduced conditions

During his campaign, Mr Kenyatta had maintained that Kenya would cooperate with the ICC, which was understood to be his way of saying he would turn for his trial even if he became president.

His inauguration speech, however, contained phrases indicating a tightening of the Kenyan position on the ICC. For the first time, the new President introduced conditions on which Kenya would cooperate with the ICC.

He said: “I assure you again that under my leadership, Kenya will strive to uphold our international obligations, so long as these are founded on the well-established principles of mutual respect and reciprocity.”

While these remarks are, of course, subject to multiple interpretations, they send two clear messages.

First, that Kenya will decide on its own what constitutes the substance of cooperation with the ICC, and if others do not agree with that interpretation, they should remember that all nations are entitled to interpret treaties for themselves, and are not bound by the interpretations of others.

Second, he put Kenya at the disposal of Africa in chatting a new way of relating with the rest of the world in as equals and not subordinates.

Subsequent events in New York and Addis Ababa have confirmed the new, hardened, position towards the ICC. Kenya has since succeeded in getting the support of the African Union behind a resolution calling on the UN Security Council to bring back to Kenya the cases before the ICC.

While the President and his deputy have had relative success in neutralising the ICC threat against them, it is still fair to say that, at the moment, the ICC remains a source of distraction to the new presidency, not only because nobody actually knows what will happen, but also because they have to also spend time concerning themselves about their defences.

If there is a feeling that the government has taken long to settle down, it is as much the result of the fact that parliamentary approval of key appointments delays things, as it is of the fact that there is still anxiety in the country as to how the ICC story will actually end.

The deployment of the Kenyan State to defend the President and his deputy against criminal charges that have been brought in their personal capacities undermines the separation between the individual and the State, and also the view that the two expressed when campaigning, that they considered the charges against them to be a personal matter.

So what does the immediate future hold? Hopefully, the government will soon settle down and an assessment of its true worth will eventually become possible. As part of this, the public will get to know and judge the new Cabinet secretaries, who, having had no public profile before, are still unknown. The President will find that he may have to intervene to save the police service in the public interest.

As regards the ICC, if the new trial datesannounced are maintained, the moment of truth will eventually come, and with it, hopefully, a settling down of the country.

Mr Kegoro is executive director, ICK-Kenya. The views expressed here are personal. [email protected]