Koigi Wa Wamwere's Take:
Cabinet Secretaries of Uhuru Will Not Perform Better Than Ministers of Kibaki, Moi and Kenyatta.
President Uhuru and Deputy President Ruto have already nominated their sixteen cabinet secretaries and the country awaits the last two.
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| Koigi Wa Wamwere |
It strikes me that, despite election of its president and deputy president, the government of Uhuru and Ruto will not be a government of the people, by the people and for the people. It will be a government of, by and for Uhuru and Ruto especially in extricating them from the ICC case which now hovers over their heads like the sword of Damocles. But if the government of Uhuru and Ruto is tasked first and foremost to fight the ICC case, it is unlikely that it will concentrate on anything else at all. You cannot be dying of cancer and worrying about failing an exam.
If the Uhuru and Ruto government will be less a government of the people and more of their own, it is unlikely that their cabinet will perform better than Cabinets of Kibaki, Moi and Kenyatta.
Because Uhuru and Ruto are heads of their government, performance of cabinet secretaries will depend entirely on their political leadership of it. The neck never leads the head and the slave does what the master wills.
When loyalty of cabinet secretaries was sought it was loyalty to Uhuru and Ruto, not the people. Equally, when ability to serve was considered, it was for service to Uhuru and Ruto, not the people.
Because they have high flying CVs, we are told cabinet secretaries will be more successful. But the highly educated Dream Team of Richard Leakey never worked wonders under President Moi. And when Kenyans fought for independence and later second liberation, the most educated fought the least. Political leadership always neuters the highly educated.
Cabinet secretaries are also considered better because they are younger. But the notorious YK92 was youth fighting to preserve one party dictatorship. While strong on energy, youth is weak on wisdom.
Though histories of most nominated cabinet secretaries are not known to the public, those whose histories are known to a few speak of involvement in outright corruption, impunity, malpractices at work and benefiting from ethnicity. Were these cabinet secretaries nominated without due diligence or were their dark histories simply ignored?
Kenya will not be lead into the First World by people of questionable characters however glittering their educational CVs, recruited from a failed civil service and recommended into government by equally questionable political connections.
If Kenya has people like Professor Micere Mugo, Dr. Patrice Lumumba, Dr. Kilemi Mwiria and Mrs. Jecintah Mwatela, why nominate persons of questionable character as cabinet secretaries?
When former acting governor of Central Bank Jecinta Mwatela was saying no to a corrupt contract that would lose the country billions of shillings, another technocrat, Attorney General Githu Muigai was writing a legal opinion for Long Horn Publishers against publication of my book “Towards Genocide in Kenya: The Curse of Negative Ethnicity” educating Kenyans against negative ethnicity. Yet Uhuru will pick Githu Muigai and skip Jecintah Mwatela!
Cabinet secretaries will not save this country into the First World without values. They must have patriotism to put national interests before those of leaders and self, courage not to perpetrate corruption scandals like Goldenberg and Anglo-Leasing when instructed, nationalism to serve Kenyans equally, and integrity to resist temptations of graft.
When Africa was fighting apartheid, I asked a friend why she worked for Barclays Bank that did business in South Africa. When she told me she did not care where the bank did business as long as it gave her a job and a salary, I knew educated Africans are mercenaries that will serve anyone however evil.
Lastly, we are told cabinet secretaries will save Kenya because they have been successful CEOs in their companies and banks whose success is their fabulous profits that are earned through milking same people they are now tasked to rescue. But only recently, excessive greed of Western CEOs collapsed their corporations and national economies only to be rescued by public funding and austerity measures. Kenya will not be saved by bank Shylocks but cabinet secretaries who will walk in the path of Jesus, Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jnr., Thomas Sankara, Julius Nyerere, Patrice Lumumba and Fidel Castro.
To reassure the public, cabinet secretaries are about to be vetted by same Parliament that itself avoided vetting by sidestepping Chapter six of the Constitution. Having compromised themselves morally, MPs cannot now deny cabinet secretaries work for sins they are themselves guilty of? Indeed, they have no moral authority or the will to vet cabinet secretaries. Their vetting exercise is nothing but whitewash to hoodwink Kenyans that sterile cabinet secretaries will fight graft, negative ethnicity, impunity, marginalization and dictatorship and lead Kenya into the First World.