Cabinet of technocrats must stay above the political fray

The hue and cry about impeaching Devolution Secretary Anne Waiguru ought to dissipate as quickly as it has gathered its malicious momentum.

However, whichever way things pan out, it has sent a very disturbing signal to the Executive, and will leave a very bitter taste in the mouth among millions of Kenyans who had invested great expectations in the technocratic structure of the Cabinet.

The promise of a Council of Ministers comprising technocrats was that it would be far above the political fray, concentrating all its energies and undivided attentions on delivering like no other Cabinet team before it.

Unfortunately, it has taken barely a year for the spectre of politics and politicking to rear its ugly head again and seek to interfere with and intervene in Kenya’s first Cabinet not drawn mainly from the political class.

Ms Waiguru is not alone in encountering this terrible throwback to the very recent era of policy management and implementation steeped in politics and all the vagaries that it entailed. Other CSs are doubtless being lined up for impeachment, not as a last resort but as a first, or early, option. This will soon be tantamount to serial abuse of the impeachment sanction.

For policy managers in the government, that is from Director level to Cabinet Secretary (Job Groups S-V), one has to walk the combination tightrope and knife-edge of the still deeply politicised attitudes of many technical staff and heads of department in terms of decision-making. Some of the staff can connive to sabotage you for no reason but that you are perceived to be “stingy” or a “slave driver” and “haughty” with it.

The public service is a very complicated edifice. Unlike the corporate sector, it involves an intricate dance of protocol and rigid hierarchical rituals.

The Kenyan public service is in transition, but the sea change is not moving at the same pace on all fronts, it is ebbing and eddying and old habits, particularly deeply-ingrained old habits, die hard.

All the posturing and platitudes aimed at CS Waiguru and others, like darts at a board, indicate that the Executive arm of government is under siege by elements of the Legislature and the Judiciary that are out to abuse newfound powers and privileges. CSs are being slapped with court orders every other day, seeking to stop them from implementing policy.

In CS Waiguru’s case, the elements and remnants in the public service of the old, petrified order that thrived on a political Cabinet are requiring her to play safe and avoid stepping on anyone’s toes.

The Cabinet of politicians and policy implementation wedded to political expediency infected the public service with a very deeply-ingrained culture of low expectations and ethnic rivalries.

The political class across five decades cultivated a Cabinet culture of loyalty and favouritism. Kenya’s first Cabinet of technocrats has introduced and tried to inject the corporate culture of reporting in the morning, discharging your duties and tasks, striving to meet your set targets, and going home on time.

There was to be no currying of favours, no slush-funding handouts, no late-night political strategy meetings in public service offices and equipment.

Cabinet ministers drawn from the political class and beholden to the General Election cycle spent their days and expended the greater part of their energies accumulating war chests for the next campaign and buying loyalty, support, even affection, on all sides.

Compared to the Cabinet of the political class, the Cabinet of technocrats -- which entered office at a time of austerity -- must seem to be “stingy” and “slave drivers” indeed, bringing as they do, a corporate culture of total focus on the job at hand.

CS Waiguru came into government from the corporate sector. She is well educated, hardworking, eloquent, and a no-nonsense “slave driver”. Her docket is one of the largest ever and has a budget to match.

A great deal of the flak she is getting also has to do with the fact that she is a beautiful woman, something which goes against the grain of her overwhelmingly male detractors’ conception of what an attractive woman’s mien, combined with power, “ought to be”. One can only liken the onslaught on the Cabinet of technocrats by elements of the political class to the orgy of impeachments being handed out to governors by MCAs.
Mbarire is the chairperson of Kenya Women Parliamentary Association