Cabinet failed to live up to its name, Uhuru should replace it
What you need to know:
- But only a few have the resolve to break with tradition and the status quo.
- Towards the end of the term of the outgoing Cabinet, the momentum for change and for implementing fresh ideas appeared to fade away.
We all thought that it was President Uhuru Kenyatta’s night of long knives — a reference to Tory Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s sudden decision in 1962 to replace a third of his Cabinet, including confidants.
On Saturday, the headlines of all the major newspapers went screaming about how the President had dropped several Cabinet ministers.
I have viewed afresh the video clip of the President’s announcement of his “partial” Cabinet. He says: “I wish to state that I am retaining (emphasis mine) the following persons in my Cabinet.”
Clearly, the newspapers were not wrong in describing the goings-on as a night of long knives. The fact that the list was being announced several weeks after the new government had been elected and sworn in was, in itself, confounding.
CABINET
In many countries, the Cabinet is announced within hours of an election victory. When you delay the naming of the Cabinet — especially in the context of a power-sharing formula in which positions must be dished out in accordance with an ethnic calculus agreed on as part of a coalition deal many years ago — you create room for speculation.
Still, and having tracked the performance of the “Uhuru I” Cabinet, a night of long knives is what most observers expected, especially considering that the President is under pressure to leave an enduring legacy in 2022.
We all expected the President to appoint men and women with more fire in their bellies than the current crop. He needed to fire or swap some of the Cabinet secretaries to project a desire for change and new direction in his last five years in power.
Secondly, this was the opportunity to tweak the whole idea of a “Cabinet of technocrats” — with which we have been experimenting over the past four years.
We have learnt that, in terms of approach to public duty, a CS is a different animal from the Cabinet minister of yesteryears. The latter was a man or woman who placed a premium on public engagement.
PUBLIC DUTY
The Cabinet minister understood that he was ultimately responsible to the electorate; so, he approached public duty differently from the CS. CSs are chaps who are more at ease when making PowerPoint presentations at conferences and seminars than addressing public barazas in remote areas.
In terms of name recognition, the minister was known throughout the country but it is possible for a CS to sneak into a public gathering and not be noticed by those present.
CSs approach public duty as if it is the most important thing and a personal service and loyalty to the appointing authority. Worse, a good number of them are poor public speakers, who will not go out of their way to communicate loudly and clearly about what their ministries are doing and what the government has achieved.
You don’t see aggressiveness and readiness to experiment and implement new ideas.
Of all CSs, the man who stands out is Dr Fred Matiang’i. And, the reason he has captured public imagination is because he has demonstrated that we still have public officers who regard the positions they hold as an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of fellow citizens.
MATIANG'I
Dr Matiang’i shines because public life is dominated by careerists, whose minds are glued on personal prospects and careers.
Our CSs preach change. But only a few have the resolve to break with tradition and the status quo.
But the biggest Achilles heel of the outgoing Cabinet was lack of capacity to implement projects on time.
The government of Ethiopia is regarded as better than ours in terms of capacity to implement projects. It has been rolling out big infrastructure projects in record time and at lower cost.
It comes as no surprise, therefore, that we have contracted the Ethiopians to sell electricity to us.
It is incredible, indeed, that, despite the fact that the electricity we are buying from Ethiopia will travel long distances to reach Kenya, it will still hit our national grid at prices lower than the power we produce locally.
LAPTOP
Which begs the question: How has the outgoing Cabinet performed in terms of capacity to roll out and complete projects on time?
The jury is still out but we all know that the 5,000 MW project did not materialise. The school laptop project did not see the light of day. Konza ‘Silicon Valley’ did not progress much. The million-acre irrigation project did not happen. The Road Annuity Project collapsed.
I could go on and on.
Towards the end of the term of the outgoing Cabinet, the momentum for change and for implementing fresh ideas appeared to fade away.
President Kenyatta should shake up that Cabinet.
