Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta takes oath of office during his
inauguration ceremony at Kasarani Stadium on November 28, 2017 in
Nairobi. FILE PHOTO | NMG
In 2013, we all supported the idea of a Cabinet composed of
technocrats. After all, the system was a requirement under the 2010
Constitution.
The arrangement presented President Uhuru
Kenyatta with an opportunity to put together a core economic management
team dominated by experts from the private sector.
Have
cabinet secretaries performed better than cabinet ministers? In the
days of yore, the cabinet functioned more or less as a national council
of elders. Members approached public duty differently because they
understood that they were ultimately responsible to the electorate.
In
those days, cabinet ministers put a high premium on public engagement.
In terms of name recognition, the ministers were known all over the
country. Cabinet secretaries are different.
Their
mindset is of individuals who are more at ease when making PowerPoint
presentations in conferences and seminars in five-star hotels than
addressing public barazas.
Today, it is very possible
for a Cabinet secretary to sneak into a public gathering without being
noticed. They don’t enjoy widespread name recognition across the
country.
They approach their work as personal service
to the appointing authority to be reciprocated by personal loyalty,
obedience and respect to their godfathers.
More disruption and uncertainty was to come with the advent of
the individuals who were tapped from the private sector to take up the
new office of ‘principal secretary’- the precursor of what we used to
call ‘permanent secretary’
In the past, the permanent
secretary- the chief executive and accounting officer of a ministry- was
appointed from within the ranks of career civil servants. He was a
permanent employee of the Public Service Commission. He attended special
courses in public administration both- locally and abroad- and would
have served in many different government departments before being
appointed to this critical position.
The principal
secretary is a different animal. He is political appointee parachuted
into public service to occupy a critical role without knowledge of the
inner workings of the Civil Service bureaucracy.
Worse,
we appointed too many of them at one go, leading to a situation where
we have ministries with multiple principal secretaries.
We
ended up with too many office holders who were yet to imbibe what
business schools call espirit de corps. The environment spawned
bureaucratic lethargy in the Civil Service.
Enough of
theory. What must Mr Kenyatta consider as he begins his second term? I
suggest that he appoints a high-profile change champion- a man or woman
of proven integrity, expertise, and skill to work with a small selected
group of team players mandated to manage change in the Civil Service.
I
think the President should revisit Dr Richard Leakey’s “Dream Team”
experiment. Leakey’s Dream Team members did not have a business as usual
attitude. What we have now are careerists. Within weeks of his
appointment, he launched a high-profile intervention in the troubled
coffee industry where he was pitted against an influential and
battled-hardened group of coffee politicians.
A
similar investigation was ordered for the Kenya Tea Development
Authority (KTDA). He intervened in the Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) where
he replaced managing director Lenny Mwangola with a former executive at
Kenya Breweries Ltd Joseph Munene.
Dr Leakey rubbed
the power-barons of the time the wrong way when he appointed a team of
auditors to investigate the affairs of the Kenya Pipeline Company –
which was then treated as a cash cow by the inner circles of the Moi
regime.
His keen interest and support for the Kenya
Anti-Corruption Authority re-invigorated the anti-corruption crusade
during his tenure at Harambee House.
He lent support
and raised the profile of the Efficiency Monitoring Unit (EMU), turning
what had been a moribund and poorly-funded outfit into an effective
outfit.
It was the EMU which did the work that led to
the prosecution for fraud of senior officers of the Ministry of
Agriculture and Livestock Development in 2001.
The
Office of the Controller and Auditor-General was strengthened and the
operations of the Central Tender Board have been made more transparent.
Mr
Kenyatta should appoint a powerful change champion with a mandate
co-ordinate and champion radical changes across the Civil Service
bureaucracy.
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