By Ben Gethi
Phyllis Kandie may, nay, will surprise many in the manner that she will execute her mandate as Secretary for Commerce, Tourism and East African Affairs.
I daresay she will succeed beyond the expectations of many and it is her background that drives me to conclude thus. Her education, training and experience are impeccable.
Ms Kandie is an investment banker of successful nature and was appointed to this post because it suits her talents and ability period, the complexities involved are familiar to her.
Investment banking is about making deals, it’s about negotiation, judgment, acting on behalf of others and getting them the best returns possible.
It’s a profession where success critically depends on extreme diligence, superior financial literacy and a precision for detail — there are the attributes Kandie brings to the table and which will serve her in great stead in every trade meeting she holds and any world capital she lands in to act on behalf of this great country.
The fact that those vetting Ms Kandie chose to ignore the immensity of her education, training and experience speaks more about them than the candidate, it suggests their process was superficial and it is they who failed to question the nominee on the substantive.
The critical questions are whether in any trade arrangement, bi-lateral, multilateral or regional Ms Kandie will:
a) Have the ability to carry out the due diligence and work out the best interests of this country b) pronounce the same to the full and c) negotiate, revise, bargain, cajole, push, pull, stomp and do whatever it takes to get Kenya a deal as close to, exactly matching or even better than the ‘best interests’ expressed above?
Starting point
These are the questions that should have determined Ms Kandie’s suitability for office. If she can work out the best trade interests of Kenya, if she has a firm grasp of what kind of deals we need to make and with who, what we need to import more, export more, who we need to trade more with and how to make it happen. Can we leverage existing relationships more than we are at the moment; are we in agreements that are not good for us? Are we in trade pacts that we are a waste of our time?
Some of these questions can only be answered on the job, when she sits down and has a close read of every agreement, when she meets trade delegations and partners and is able to sass out what they want from Kenya and why? When she sits down with Kenyan producers and traders of every extraction and hears their stories and challenges.
The deal breaker here is whether the minister has the qualifications and ability to tread, manipulate and exploit trade negotiations and her CV screams that she does and nothing in the vetting process challenged her qualifications.
Going by her credentials Ms Kandie brings a fresh, apolitical and management centric perspective to the ministry and that is a good thing. She holds an economics degree and an MBA and has used both to pretty good effect in private enterprise.
The failure to automatically sing on demand Kenya’s trade memberships and partnerships was not a noteworthy starting point by Kandie but let us not pretend that is enough to deny her the job or sufficient marker for her ability to do the job.
The purpose of vetting was not to establish that the nominees could rattle off a few nuggets about their soon-to-be dockets but to interrogate their ability and suitability for public office — those are two wildly different matters.
As a result of the vetting Ms Kandie will probably work harder now than her peers to prove herself to the public and I hope she uses this lesson well and understands that public service is unlike the private sector, she has to be more than talented, more than educated and sophisticated-there is little room for error on the national arena. This was her first run in with parliament and many more are ahead.
Travesty averted
She also needs to get used finding herself in the full blaze of lights, cameras and questions; these are part and parcel of then job now.
The examination provided by the vetting was insufficient and cursory. We do not need people who can roll off a few nuggets of information, rather we need educated, well rounded minds with the ability to do the job and Kandie exactly fits that bill.
We would have lost a potentially phenomenal public servant because we were too focused examining the wrong aspects of our Cabinet nominees and it would have been a massive travesty.
Watch Ms Kandie closely, that’s what her background says.
Writer is a communications expert and commentator on trade issues.
