Draft law points to a better future

There is a remarkably frank exchange recorded in Njenga Karume’s recent autobiography in which the veteran politician explains why he formed the Democratic Party.

With President Moi and Kanu becoming increasingly unpopular in 1991, the natural destination for dissatisfied party members was the umbrella opposition movement, Ford.

Mr Karume had other ideas. He approached his friends Mwai Kibaki and John Keen and counselled them against joining the opposition alliance.

His reasoning was that the party was already “top heavy”. Karume, Keen and Kibaki were unlikely to “fit into the party structure simply because there was insufficient space for them”.

So to go round this problem, he suggested they form their own party. That’s how DP was founded, in a chat which may have lasted about five minutes. With its formation, the dream of opposition unity was shattered, and President Moi took his first step towards extending Kanu’s ruinous rule.

This little conversation says a lot about the cynicism of local politicians. It’s the same around the world, but the situation in Kenya is compounded by the fact that politicians represent not just parties but complex regional and ethnic interests.

This was Winston Churchill’s conclusion after a visit to the country in the 1950s. “Every white man in Nairobi is a politician, and most of them are leaders of parties.”

All these years on, the situation is not much different. But the proposed new constitution offers recommendations that might vastly improve the way we are governed.

The draft proposes that a minister shall not be a member of parliament. There is, of course, the risk that the President might still opt to appoint political types to the Cabinet.

But the recommendation at least paves the way for a President who seeks to put in place an effective team to appoint competent technocrats to run key ministries.

This would be a big step forward. It would probably reduce corruption. In the current system, many ministers also double as political patrons of whole ethnic groups.

It is difficult for them to resist the temptation to use their positions to reward cronies with appointments to key parastatal posts and to keep supporters happy with handouts drawn from the ministry’s budget.

It would be very different if you had some of the private sector stars running the affairs of government.

The likes of Michael Joseph (who, by the way, is a Kenyan citizen), James Mwangi and Michael Oduor Otieno have performed remarkably well in their jobs partly because they do not have queues of constituents in their offices waiting patiently to receive cash to pay for relatives’ funerals or, as one MP complained not too long ago, their wives’ maternity fees.

It would obviously be great if these talents were transferred to the Cabinet. The private sector is still underdeveloped in Africa. Government spends by far the biggest amount of money in the economy here.

Despite the hype from World Bank technocrats about the importance of the private sector in driving growth, the truth is that Kenya and many other countries at our stage of development are going through a phase of ‘‘state capitalism’’ where the government is the leading actor in the economy.

It is, therefore, vital that we have the best talents running the Cabinet, and the new constitution opens the door for this -- as long as the religious extremists and freelance moralists who have formed a coalition to block it are kept at bay.

The draft might also help to keep away the jokers who have populated the Cabinet over the years, like the finance minister in the early 1980s who forgot it was budget day.

mmutiga@ke.nationmedia.com