Musalia Mudavadi: ‘Uhuru’s Cabinet bloated and lacks inclusivity’

Kenya: Amani Coalition leader Musalia Mudavadi has criticised President Uhuru Kenyatta’s fresh appointments to the Cabinet arguing they fell short of expectations of gender fairness, leanness and inclusivity.

Mudavadi said, “the people of Kenya expected a breath of fresh air in a reconstituted Cabinet. A reconstituted Cabinet would have made all the people of Kenya feel part of the government.”

Mudavadi said President Uhuru squandered a chance to have an inclusive Cabinet that has a national outlook and gender fairness.

“The reshuffle didn’t change the platform Jubilee operates on. It was merely an issue of slotting individuals in a pre-determined TNA/URP line-up. The opportunity for an inclusive Executive was once again missed. The appointments score high on the exclusivity test,” he said in a statement sent to media houses Wednesday.

“The Cabinet does not meet conditional quotas for regional and gender balance. In fact the women of Kenya have lost big; the one-third gender constitutional requirement has been broken. The original six women have been reduced to five in a Cabinet of twenty-one,” he said.

He accused Jubilee of involvement in dangerous and expensive experiments in governance.

“It is a rewind to the crisis Cabinet former President Moi created under the Dream Team experiment. Jubilee has copied the same without the galaxy of the Dream Team. Instead of a lean Executive, Jubilee has now a bloated one with ministries re-named and departments deceptively put under Principal Secretaries,” Mudavadi said in a hard hitting statement.

Pitching his criticism as a bloated bureaucracy, he said, “most of the functions should have been devolved to counties. It should have pruned itself of these functions that have been baptised departments.”

Coming from a background of a huge wage bill, the former Finance Minister and Vice President said Kenya is struggling to find money to fund its operations.

“It is unable to fund the IEBC to carry out its constitutional duties of registering voters. The irony is that the same government manufactures by-elections which require money by poaching elected MPs. In which case, the government has shot itself in the foot: it will have no reason to argue there is no money to fund a referendum”, he said.

He urged Parliament to exercise her opportunity in its vetting role and do a thorough job of vetting than it did on the first cabinet.

“Scrutiny should not just focus on an individual’s integrity and qualifications to hold a docket,” Mudavadi said.

He said Uhuru’s appointments must be interrogated on whether they meet the requirements of section 130 of the constitution, which require that the composition of the national Executive (Cabinet) reflects the regional and ethnic diversity of the people of Kenya”.