It looks like a competent Cabinet, but where is the visionary among them?

By MACHARIA GAITHO

Posted  Monday, April 29  2013 

IN SUMMARY

• That was a brave move that could forever alter power dynamics in Kenya, but it will ultimately be measured by whether the distinguished men and women named to the Cabinet will push the reform agenda, or whether they will just be status quo bureaucrats.
• Mr Henry Rotich and Ms Ann Waiguru may also have been competent policy wonks at the Treasury, but I don’t see anything in their CVs indicating appreciation of the works of another Nobel laureate, philosopher and development economist, Amartya Sen.

President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto — note that they come as a pair to confirm yet another nusu mkate/power-sharing coalition — have rightly earned plaudits for largely honouring their pledge to leave politician out of their Cabinet.

However old habits die hard, and space had to be found to keep alive the political careers of election rejects Charity Ngilu and Najib Balala.

The UhuRuto duo also could not entirely discard the bad old ways of doing things.

Therefore even in largely selecting professionals and technocrats, each still ensured his half of the Cabinet was dominated by a trusted ethnic loyalist, especially in the supposedly ‘lucrative’ dockets that provide the best opportunity for skimming the cream.

Oh, well, even as they profess change and reform, we must accept that Rome was not built in a day. It’s often a case of two steps forward and one step backwards. What we have to guard against is a reactionary mindset that might give us one step forward and two steps backwards.

Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto did indeed score a major feat by mostly shutting out politicians from their Cabinet.

That was a brave move that could forever alter power dynamics in Kenya, but it will ultimately be measured by whether the distinguished men and women named to the Cabinet will push the reform agenda, or whether they will just be status quo bureaucrats.

It will also be interesting to see whether real power will come to be exercised by shadowy political and mercantile barons at State House as members of the Cabinet are reduced to impotent paper pushers.

Looking at the CVs of those appointed so far, I am suitably impressed. Many come with stellar credentials from the world of banking and finance, academia, public service, professions, and so on.

But, unfortunately, I don’t see the change agent in any of them. I see conservative career bureaucrats and managers who will always be much more comfortable with the status quo; who might reflexively be appalled by anything that threatens the established order.

I don’t doubt that Adan Mohammed, James Macharia and Phylis Kandie have been competent bank employees in the private sector, but nothing in their resumes persuades me that they would have gone against the grain to reach out to the unbanked.

They probably would have laughed Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus of the fabled Grameen Bank out of town. After all, banking is about super-profits, not about caring for the less-privileged.

Mr Henry Rotich and Ms Ann Waiguru may also have been competent policy wonks at the Treasury, but I don’t see anything in their CVs indicating appreciation of the works of another Nobel laureate, philosopher and development economist, Amartya Sen.

In other words, we don’t have dreamers, visionaries, thinkers, idealists and radicals in this Cabinet.

We don’t have the types that will be out to shake things up and embark on a brave new course that grows the economy while providing social justice and closing that criminal rich-poor gap.

We have Cabinet secretaries who will be fixated on fixing the economy, tweaking management processes and introducing private sector discipline, while remaining blissfully ignorant that inequality in Kenya is a ticking time-bomb.

President Kenyatta and Mr Ruto have chosen acolytes who think like them: Make the rich richer and wealth will trickle down; The poor are poor because they are foolish, unable to take advantage of the many opportunities available.

The President, his deputy and their entire Cabinet should read one Thomas Sankara: “You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. In this case, it comes from nonconformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future. It took the madmen of yesterday for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today. I want to be one of those madmen. We must dare to invent the future”.

If this Cabinet is expected to drive reform towards democratic, prosperous and just society, it needs a few madmen.

mgaitho@ke.nationmedia.co
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