By Mwenda Njoka
NAIROBI, KENYA: That it took so long — a whole two weeks — after their inauguration as President and Deputy President for Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto to announce their Cabinet nominees is a clear pointer to the complexity of issues at hand.
Both Uhuru and Ruto came to power under complicated circumstances. Theirs was not the usual presidential race. It was tinged with myriad issues right from day one not least of all the nagging question of the Kenyan cases at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Besides ICC and the international community, there are of course other constituencies Uhuru and Ruto had to take into consideration as they crafted their Cabinet. The key constituencies at play here invariably must include: Jubilee (Uhuru-Ruto) supporters, their non-supporters (but still Kenyans!), election losers hoping for a career boost through Cabinet appointments and the issue of the minimum constitutional requirements in composition of the Cabinet. And that is where the tightrope begins.
Starting from a point where the maximum number of Cabinet Secretaries the President can appoint is constitutionally capped at 22, and you have a country made up of diverse communities and interests definitely not just 22, then this clearly becomes the political equivalent of being in a Catch-22 situation; almost literally and figuratively. And for Uhuru — unlike predecessors at State House — unfortunately he does not enjoy the luxury of being let free to create an overly bloated Cabinet at whim. So the biggest challenge becomes how to satisfy, mollify and placate all the constituencies with vested interests in having one of their own in the Cabinet.
The situation Uhuru and Ruto were in as they crafted their Cabinet must have been akin to the one Jesus found himself in at the shores of the sea of Galilee when he had to feed a multitude of some five thousand people but the only food his disciples had was five loaves of bread and two fish! At least in the case of Jesus, he could perform miracles and transform the five loaves and two fish into food enough for five thousand.
But Uhuru and Ruto are not miracle performers so the most they could do was to agonise, strategise, think and re-think how to divide the ‘five loaves and two fish’ to the multitude of the country’s vested interests.
How do you convince, say a politician like Prof Sam Ongeri, Ali Mwakwere and other Jubilee Coalition candidates that although they supported you to the hilt — and suffered a political backlash from voters as a result — you are not going to put them back in the Cabinet?
How do you convince communities that voted for you almost to the man that it is in their (and the country’s) best interests that you do not favour them in the appointment of Cabinet nominees?
How do you convince your supporters that in the larger interests of the country, it is imperative to embrace even more closely those who did not support or vote for you? Do you tell them the story of the Prodigal Son? Given the innumerable and conflicting constituencies that have to be catered for in the business of crafting a national government, inevitably some constituencies will feel left out and say as much.
The Cabinet — at least the larger part of it — is now out there, so the next issue of focus should be the composition of other appointments and/or nominations to the remaining key public positions. For these, Uhuru and Ruto will have to do whatever it takes to ensure the constituencies left in an aggrieved situation over the composition of the Cabinet are catered for and made to feel catered for. That is the political tightrope which President Uhuru and his deputy Ruto have no choice but master how to walk on successfully without falling into the abyss
