They say wine gets better with age—maybe the same can be said about leadership.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying this because I am one of those who have been waiting to become future leaders all my life. Nor am I saying it because I have anything against the current crop of young leaders or the growing wave advocating for Gen Z leadership.
But if they want to become leaders, Gen Z and our so-called ‘young faces in leadership’ must show their credentials. They must show that they can lead and lead well. So far, they have not done this very well. As soon as they got appointed, the most futuristic ‘young leaders’ in government immediately embarked on changing their wardrobe and cars, and quickly adopting the mechanical mannerisms associated with power.
But then, maybe part of the argument against young faces in Ruto’s government is fueled by generational tensions within government, where older officials are forced to salute young fellows barely out of diapers and take instructions from baby faces that have no clue about the intricate operations of the institutions entrusted to them.
Which brings us to the question: Is the biggest weakness of Ruto’s government entrusting key positions to ‘professional juveniles’ who continue to expose his government’s soft underbelly to its fiercest critics through their handling of the dockets they have been mandated to run?
Let’s put it more bluntly: Should Ruto have put more experienced hands in key ministries in government such as Internal Security, Finance and Defence?
His predecessors did exactly that: President Daniel arap Moi entrusted the Internal Security docket to father figures like GG Kariuki and Justus Ole Tipis. President Mwai Kibaki trusted the security docket to old hands like John Michuki, George Saitoti and Yusuf Haji.
Ruto’s predecessor, Uhuru Kenyatta, entrusted the Internal Security docket to the experienced Joseph Ole Nkaissery after initially experimenting with a greenhorn—an experiment that quickly went south.
We are not saying that the young and the not-so-young should not be trusted with power. But if public perception is anything to go by, a good number of young faces in Ruto’s government have so far failed to prove to the public that they can handle power without allowing it to go to their heads.
A growing public perception out there is that a good number of Ruto’s appointees in government are in it for the money and not for the job. They have the jobs not to serve the public they were appointed to serve, but to serve as court poets for the appointing master. A good number appear to be doing the job to make as much money as they can, to make hay while the sun shines and, where possible, fill every open space within their dockets with their family and friends.
Very few appear to be doing the job for the love of this country.
This perhaps explains why it is only the President who seems to be struggling to explain his development record to a sceptical public. Perhaps it is because a good number of the people he appointed to government do not even believe some of the things he says to Kenyans.
Perhaps a good number of these government officials are already quietly sabotaging their boss, quietly working with the other side to secure places for themselves in the next government should their boss lose the next election.
It might be that if those working in Ruto’s government right now were paid in full for the remaining months of his administration, a good number would quickly ditch the President and move to the other side.
It would not be surprising. Just look at how quickly some of the fellows Ruto helped from grass to grace turned against him as soon as they fell out of favour with him.
This shift should be a painful lesson for Ruto—painful enough to make the President do a complete overhaul of the current crop of government officials, if only to change public perception of his government on the homestretch of his first term in office.
Mr Karanja is a media and public communications consultant. muchiri.karanja@gmail.com
