Mission Impossible: Turn the Kenya Police around

Just under 40 candidates were selected to interview to serve on the new National Police Service Commission. The Commission’s constitutional mandate is to oversee the human resource management of the Kenya Police Force.

The candidates include past and serving state security officers. They have reiterated what is already in the public domain regarding the challenges of reforming the Kenya Police: Its bureaucratic and, paradoxically, both lethargic and politicised institutional culture. The lethargy is, in turn, attributed to unsatisfactory remuneration and conditions of service as well as to its real capacity constraints. The source of its politicisation is not named but its expressions are — favouritism and nepotism.

Clearly, all eventually appointed to the Commission will have their work cut out for them. They, together with the ultimate head of the two services, including the Administration Police, will have to somehow instil a new sense of mission and public service into the force and ensure its professionalisation. Which means they will also have to find a way to quickly demonstrate resolve to (finally) settle remuneration and conditions of service concerns as well as capacity concerns.

Which means, in turn, that they’ll have to have the clout to leverage what they need out of Treasury. Which, finally, means that they’ll have to show that doing so is bringing results.

These are not small tasks. Neither, in any way, are all the tasks associated with ending the politicisation of the police. It is not as though the institutional culture of the executive has changed — particularly in terms of feeling the purpose of the Kenya Police is to serve the executive rather than the public.

Neither is it evident that the institutional culture of individual politicians has changed — in terms here of believing that they all need “ins” with the state security services. This being the case, the question that really pertains for the interviewing panel in making their selections are whether any of the candidates really have evidenced a sense of the scale of the problems before them. And, importantly, whether their personal intellectual, political and social capital are of the calibre required to deliver.

Unfortunately, the sense that has come through is not encouraging. Everybody interviewed seemed to have some idea (as we all do) of one aspect of the problem or another. But not, in all cases, the full scale of the problem. Neither did an impression come across of candidates having the gravitas required to actually move and shake things to the level desired.

This should make us worried. Particularly in light of the ongoing debate about whether an internal or external “manager” is the best option to head the Kenya Police. There are, of course, arguments in favour of getting a manager who knows from her or his own experience the difficulties of actually serving in the force. But there are also the arguments in favour of getting somebody who knows about management change and how to achieve it — particularly within the public sector. It is not, for example, like the head of the Kenya Wildlife Service knew anything about animals or being a ranger when he took over the job. But he has, by all accounts, done a sterling job of turning the KWS around. And there are lessons for the public sector in how he did so — including getting buy-in from the KWS itself.

L. Muthoni Wanyeki is doing her graduate studies at L’Institut d’etudes politiques (Sciences Po) in Paris, France