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Vetting of Kenya Cabinet nominees lacking in spirit of the constitution

Tuesday February 20 2018
vetting

Kenyan MPs vet a Cabinet nominee on February 8, 2018. Vetting was introduced so as to cure a problem that is at the heart of the country’s underdevelopment — the appointment of people who are not qualified to positions critical to the country’s development ambitions. PHOTO | DENNIS ONSONGO | NMG

By TEE NGUGI

In his ground breaking essay, In Praise of Alienation, Abiola Irele argued that Africa needed to move beyond teaching science, and begin to cultivate a scientific spirit.

In similar vein, it seems that we follow constitutional procedure without cultivating a culture of constitutionalism.

Kenya’s 2010 Constitution spells out principles, systems and procedures on the basis of which to organise our nation-state. The goal of the Constitution is to bring about equity, justice and prosperity.

So even where the Constitution is silent or ambiguous on some issues, interpretation of its intention should be guided by its purpose. Constitutionalism then is a culture or a mental outlook that always follows not only the letter of the constitution but also its spirit, the latter which can be thought of as its purpose — equity, justice and prosperity.

Vetting was introduced so as to cure a problem that is at the heart of the country’s underdevelopment — the appointment of people who are not qualified to positions critical to the country’s development ambitions.

Vetting, therefore, was to ensure that individuals who were appointed to these positions were the most qualified and talented in the land. They had to have the right education, be of unquestionable personal integrity, have a track record of exceptional achievement in the previous careers, and be people with an almost obsessive desire to bring about transformation.

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In 2013, the first vetting exercise of people nominated as Cabinet secretaries and other important positions took place. Questions were asked and answered, but did the exercise have the intended effect and did it eventually achieve the goals of the Constitution?

Of all those confirmed in their positions, only one seems to have lived up to the exceptionally high requirements of his office. That person was Fred Matiang’i, whose talents, unfortunately, are now being misused to achieve extra constitutional goals. The rest of the Cabinet secretaries proved to be mediocre, downright inept or even criminally negligent.

Underpar

The man picked to head the education ministry seemed overwhelmed by the enormity of the chaos — rampant indiscipline among pupils, institutionalised exam cheating, corruption, strikes and low morale of staff.

When he was moved to the Lands ministry, it seemed like an act of mercy to save him from drowning in the mess. Unfortunately, the Lands ministry proved to be in an even a bigger mess. In the end, the minister left the ministry the same way he had found it — a veritable mess of cartels, corruption, and a system that could not verify the authenticity its own records.

Meanwhile, the minister for Agriculture appeared on television during the last drought and triumphantly assured us that drought and famine management had improved during his watch because fewer animals and people had died as compared with the previous drought.

Without any sense of irony, he said that the problem was not lack of food in the country, but its distribution. Fifty years since Independence, we still had not figured out how to get food to drought-stricken areas so that no one dies.

At the ministry of Devolution, billions of shillings went missing, and the Cabinet secretary in charge looked as bewildered as everyone else how such a large-scale heist had been executed.

At the ministry of Health, the minister was distracted from dealing with the longest strike by doctors since Independence in order to fully concentrate on a power struggle with his principle secretary. In that department, too, billions of shillings were lost in blatant corruption scams.

Indeed, all the ministries scored either minimally or — as in the ministries of Education, Lands, Agriculture and Health — failed miserably. The only conclusion then we can make is that the vetting process did not result in identifying exceptionally gifted individuals, and therefore did not achieve the aims of the Constitution. We had gone through the motions of constitutionalism but we had ended up subverting its aims.

Lacklustre

Now again, parliament has been vetting nominees to the Cabinet. Unfortunately once more, it is all form and no substance. With the possible exception of the nominee to head the Foreign Affairs docket, the others have showed no extraordinary skills, do not have a record of exceptional achievements in earlier positions, and are not convincing in articulation of their visions.

We will once again have gone through the motions of constitutional procedure without furthering the aims of the Constitution. And we will once again be in a familiar place — stasis in democratic and economic development.

Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political commentator. E-mail: [email protected]

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