In a move that may have taken many Kenyans by surprise, President Uhuru Kenyatta reconstituted his Cabinet on Tuesday by appointing six new Cabinet Secretaries, shuffling some to other ministries and sacking the five who had earlier stepped aside to facilitate investigations into allegations of corruption against them.
In March this year, President Kenyatta presented to the National Assembly a list of 176 individuals whom he said should face investigations, among whom were the five Cabinet Secretaries; Charity Ngilu, Kazungu Kambi, Davis Chirchir, Felix Koskei and Michael Kamau. The understanding at the time was that they step aside for a period of 60 days to facilitate investigations.
Many of the Cabinet Secretaries have since been cleared of any wrong-doing by the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission. While they themselves and the general public expected they would be recalled, the President, in a surprise move, announced their replacements. The President's action first, fulfilled a constitutional requirement that the Cabinet must consist of no fewer than 13 Cabinet Secretaries at any given time. Secondly, it supplemented his efforts to fight corruption that has tarnished the reputation of the Jubilee administration locally and abroad.
Pressure from the Opposition, civil society and the public may have triggered a number of changes, starting with the recent resignation of Devolution Cabinet Secretary Anne Waiguru last Saturday. Then on
On Monday this week, President Kenyatta outlined stringent measures his administration would take to contain runaway graft on the back of comprehensive proposals from the businesses community.
While the measures look good on paper, there has been some degree of skepticism, especially because similar proclamations in the past have yielded little progress, and new reports of corruptions have continued to emerge.
No doubt, President Kenyatta feels the weight of corruption on his administration, especially now that the international community has joined the chorus of condemnation of the government's seeming lack of capacity to deal with this problem.
The Cabinet reshuffle by the President and appointment of new Principal Secretaries, though well intentioned in our view, has already been misconstrued in some quarters as a design by the Uhuru administration to position itself ahead of the next General Election.
To allay these misgivings, this action must create some impetus in the war on corruption. The reconstituting of the Cabinet and shuffling senior state officers is just the first step in this campaign.
We believe that the President's reconstitution of the Cabinet was not just out of political expediency, but an action that was motivated to turn the tide in the war on graft. Bold measures have been outlined to claw back from the devastating effects of corruption, especially because service delivery has been affected in some ministries. And to improve service delivery, more will be expected from additional state departments created, especially because they will contribute significantly to the burgeoning wage bill. The President has stated that this expansion was necessary because some ministries were too large and difficult to administer. He will have expanded the state departments well aware of the ramifications.
The President has played his card in his quest to develop a defining legacy, and now we expect the newly-reconstituted team to deliver on its mandate.
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