Name Ababu to Cabinet to cure his confidence deficit

Budalang’i MP Ababu Namwamba is making a habit of running a confidence deficit among his colleagues in the National Assembly.

His chairmanship of the watchdog Public Accounts Committee, which provides oversight on government expenditure, has run into headwinds because many team members have been publicly collecting signatures for his removal.

Mr Namwamba writes too much and too long. Since he started writing flowery and highly fictitious reports about secret bank accounts operated in the name of the police, frauds that never were, and inappropriate questions about the hire of jets, it has not been possible to see any real work the committee has done.

There is a railway being built, a laptop project on course and a port in Lamu whose construction is on the verge of commencement, but the committee is always retreating, rewriting and re-editing old reports. Little wonder that the incendiary reports of Mr Namwamba’s committee have not merited debate ahead of the recently passed Order of Precedence Bill in the National Assembly.

Chairing PAC is no call to a writing career, as a study of the tenures of President Uhuru Kenyatta, former President Mwai Kibaki and Ford Kenya chairmen Kijana Wamalwa and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga illustrate.

Although Mr Kenyatta said some really nasty things about Anglo Leasing during his time as PAC chair, he atoned for his earlier offences by paying the mysterious foreign investors last year, courtesy of a court order issued in London. Jaramogi and Mr Wamalwa said something to the effect that Kamlesh Pattni, much-maligned over the loss of over Sh100 billion in the Goldenberg export compensation scheme, should receive financial reparations for economic trauma.

NEVER DEBATED

Mr Kibaki was not shaking any trees other than discussing the absence of economic theory in Kenya’s budgeting. He and Mr Kenyatta ended up in State House.

Granted, there have been a few gadfly chairmen of the PAC, such as then Ikolomani MP Boni Khalwale, who took on Finance minister Amos Kimunya over the sale of the Grand Regency Hotel.

Mr Namwamba would do well to urgently learn from his tried and tested predecessors before he develops a penchant for writing reports that are never debated.

Four years ago, when Mr Namwamba chaired the critical parliamentary committee on Justice and Legal Affairs, it could not get work done for a whole year. In February 2011, members of the committee passed a vote of no-confidence in Mr Namwamba and would have replaced him had it not been for the protection of his political patrons.

Mr Namwamba had, in quite un-leader-like fashion, written a minority report to the effect that then President Mwai Kibaki should not have nominated individuals to the positions of Chief Justice, Attorney-General, Director of Public Prosecutions and Controller of Budget. It is a grudge Mr Namwamba’s colleagues in the committee held against him and spread to the National Assembly until he was rescued with appointment as Youth Affairs and Sports minister.

Since Mr Namwamba is a repeat offender, and his cure well established, it appears that nominating him for the position of Cabinet Secretary would prevent the Public Accounts Committee from running into paralysis.

Since the President has not used up the quota of 22 Cabinet Secretaries provided for in the Constitution, his nomination of Mr Namwamba would occasion a vacancy for the Budalang’i parliamentary seat that would give the country a much needed political contest.

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