I did nothing to warrant this: Waiguru

Ms Ann Waiguru expresses consternation that members of the National Assembly want her sacked as Cabinet Secretary for Devolution and Planning.

She did nothing illegal or out of procedure to warrant an impeachment motion, she insists. What started as a sectional grouse by Rift Valley MPs in the ruling coalition over the removal of Mr Kiplimo Rugut as director of the National Youth Service has snowballed into a major impeachment move attracting MPs from across the board.

Asked why the move to kick her out has gained such traction, Ms Waiguru appears nonplussed, saying that she has no idea and the question would better be directed to those fronting the initiative.
In a conversation at her Harambee House office on Wednesday, Ms Waiguru was non-committal and very tight-lipped on most queries.

Had she tried to find out what MPs had against her? Was she fighting back? Was she talking to the MPs? Did she hope that President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto would intervene to save her skin?

On all those key questions, Ms Waiguru gave answers that revealed little or nothing about what she knows about the campaign to kick her out and how she planned to counter the move.

One stock reply to almost any query was that she is not a politician, just an ordinary public servant doing her job.

One thing she cannot escape, however, is the simple fact that the transfer of Mr Rugut from NYS in her ministry to the vacant office of Secretary of Sports in the Ministry of Sports, Culture and Arts has placed her firmly in the line of fire; caught in the middle in the simmering feuds within the ruling coalition often stoked by a group of Rift Valley politicians from the URP side led by the outspoken Nandi Hills MP Alfred Keter.

(READ: Waiguru: I did not fire Rugut via SMS, but he had to leave)

Almost as soon as Mr Rugut, a career civil servant, was moved, the MPs cried foul, arguing that it was yet another example of Mr Ruto’s URP half of the coalition being shortchanged by President Uhuru Kenyatta’s TNA grouping.

They charged that Ms Waiguru had unfairly sacked Mr Rugut through a text message, and to add insult to injury replaced him with a Kikuyu, former State House comptroller Nelson Githinji, who has been cooling his heels in the Ministry of Industrialisation and Enterprise Development since the Jubilee administration came to power.

Although Mr Rugut is a career civil servant whose original appointment had nothing to do with appeasing URP political constituencies, the MPs insisted that the removal was another example of President Kenyatta’s Kikuyu benefitting at the expense of Mr Ruto’s Kalenjin in the coalition government.

Mr Keter and a grouping of MPs have taken many opportunities to raise such issues, often challenging Mr Ruto to stand up for his half of the coalition.

Mr Rugut’s removal therefore provided them with another opportunity to take up the cudgels, but it is not clear how the matter escalated from a purely factional URP grievance to a push enthusiastically fronted by MPs from President Kenyatta’s central Kenya wing of the coalition.

On Monday, the MPs called a press conference at Parliament to build their case against Ms Waiguru. They escalated the matter beyond Mr Rugut to demand renegotiation of the TNA-URP power-sharing agreement, and even went to the extent of volunteering to raise funds and refund any money one of their own might have received as the price for supporting Mr Kenyatta’s presidential candidacy.

When the impeachment motion was crafted on Tuesday and a signature campaign launched, however, the prime movers were not just the Rift Valley MPs, but a wider grouping led by Igembe South MP Mithika Linturi.

Clearly, matters had grown in scope from the sectional complaint to a wider offensive that seems grounded not just in the Rugut issue but deeper animosity against Ms Waiguru from within the Jubilee coalition.

Ms Waiguru is probably the single most powerful cabinet secretary in the Kenyatta Cabinet. Her Devolution and Planning docket encompasses a large number of critical departments with reach and influence across the entire government.

When Ms Waiguru a few weeks ago fired Youth Enterprise Fund chairman Evans Gor Semelango, a direct appointee of President Kenyatta, he caustically referred to her as “Prime Minister”, a description that probably captures the kind of power and influence she wields.

(READ: Two in court over Semelang'o sacking)

It is not surprising that the impeachment motion also includes Mr Semelango’s sacking as an example of Ms Waiguru’s alleged intimidation and threats directed at public servants.

However, the manoeuvres fail to capture the fact that Mr Rugut was not fired, but transferred within the government. An even more salient point is that on paper, the transfer was effected not by Ms Waiguru, but by President Kenyatta’s Chief of Staff and Head of Public Service, Mr Joseph Kinyua.

Mr Rugut was one of 11 senior officers transferred by a May 9 circular sent by Mr Kinyua to all Principal Secretaries.

This would be Ms Waiguru’s defense against accusations that she is responsible for Mr Rugut’s removal from NYS.

On the issue of whether she has become too powerful and therefore attracted undue attention from politicians, Ms Waiguru pleads that she is no more powerful than other cabinet secretaries.

As to her expansive docket that clearly gives her more functions and responsibilities than her colleagues, she insists that her ministry is not much bigger than others. The perception was created, she says, by the fact that many small departments that were elevated to full ministries to satisfy the demands of the bloated Grand Coalition Government of President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga were simply collapsed back into the departments that they previously were and then put under her ministry.

There is no denying, however, that key departments under her watch make her very visible and in many ways the fulcrum on which many of the challenges of transition swing.

She will not comment on whether that apparent power could be influencing a backlash, or the fact that she is relatively youthful, a woman and from outside the traditional public service mainstream and now occupies such a central position.