Public given one week to present views on top jobs

PHOTO | DENNIS OCHIENG Wananchi wait outside Parliament Buildings when President Uhuru Kenyatta addressed the first session of the 11th Parliament on April 16. The public will be given one week to give their views on nominees for Cabinet secretaries.  NATION MEDIA GROUP

By PETER LEFTIE

In Summary

• Speaker says law requires wananchi’s participation in the hiring of State officers who must now be vetted

The public will participate in the vetting of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Cabinet expected to be released this week.

National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi confirmed on Sunday that the Parliamentary Committee on Appointments will collect views from the public regarding the suitability or otherwise of the Cabinet nominees.

This will be the first time in Kenya’s history that the public will be given a direct say in the appointment of such high ranking public officials.

“The law requires that there is public participation in all appointments to state and public offices. The procedure is that once the President forwards the names to the Speaker, the Speaker shall give a communication from the chair forwarding the names to the Committee on Appointments, which will issue a notice through the Clerk of the National Assembly inviting members of the public to give their views on the proposed names,” Mr Muturi explained.

“The public hearings will run for seven days at a venue to be identified by the Committee, but in Nairobi.”

Mr Muturi expects to receive the names from President Uhuru Kenyatta this week.

The Committee on Appointments, which will be constituted on Tuesday, will consider the views gathered from the public and incorporate them in its report, which will form the basis of debate in Parliament.

President Kenyatta on Thursday released a list of the ministries of his lean government, but without names of the Cabinet secretaries who will take up the dockets.

Kenyans have been waiting for the naming of the Cabinet secretaries since President Kenyatta and deputy President William Ruto were sworn in on April 9.

The delay has been blamed on haggling over the allocation of portfolios.

Allies of President Kenyatta and Mr Ruto revealed that the Jubilee Coalition partners were still negotiating over the sharing of some powerful portfolios and which side should cede some seats to smaller parties with which Jubilee signed post-election deals to tighten its hold on Parliament.

Reports also indicated that the TNA and URP leaders were keen to poach some nominees from Cord.

Allies of the two leaders indicated to the Nation that the two had decided to overhaul the entire structure of the administration they found in place in what is being referred to as “government re-engineering”.

Lean and efficient

This, sources said, will go beyond naming of a new Cabinet and principal secretaries to involve ambassadors and high commissioners, heads of state corporations and top positions at the level of directors in ministries and departments.

On Thursday, President Kenyatta reduced the number of ministries from 44 to 18, keeping his pledge of a lean and efficient administration. Some ministries were merged as others were retained as distinct dockets.

Mr Kenyatta renamed the Ministry of Internal Security and Provincial Administration as Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government, which he retained in his office.

He also merged the ministries of Local Government and that of Planning to form the Ministry of Devolution and Planning under the Office of the President.

The ministries of Defence; Foreign Affairs; Information, Communication and Technology (ICT); and Sports, Culture and the Arts were unveiled as stand-alone dockets.

The Ministry of Finance was renamed the National Treasury; the ministries of Medical Services and Public Health were brought under a single Ministry of Health, while Basic Education and Higher Education were collapsed into one docket, which will include the department of Science and Technology.

Transport, Roads and Public Works were merged into the Transport and Infrastructure ministry, while Water Resources and the Environment and Natural Resources were lumped together.