Here comes the Cabinet Secretaries, and being new it has chance to effect change

By Donald Kipkorir

Our Cabinet as envisaged by the Constitution is complete. The Constitution says our Cabinet consists of the President, Deputy President, Attorney General and not fewer than 14 and not more than 22 Cabinet Secretaries. The executive branch of the Government is fully constituted and needs to commence actualisation of our national dreams and aspirations, as set out in the Jubilee manifesto. As a democracy, a people give a chance in every election period to a political group to implement their policies.

Some political group is lucky to be given a chance to rule for so long as the Barisan Nasional which has won every election in Malaysia, or where parties hardly complete their terms as in Italy or where they alternate as in America. Our new cabinet can decide which they want of Jubilee Coalition.

Our ministers are all novices bar Charity Kaliku Ngilu and Najib Balala. As they commence their duties, it is always instructive to go back to the basics, to the origins. Like most non-scientific things in life, we cannot with certainty put a finger on when the first Cabinet in its modern form sat.

But again, History tries to attribute origins to someone, maybe because of which Historians are more influential. In this instance, King Charles I [1600-1649], of England was a King of contradictions, but also a reformer. Against the tradition, he married a Roman Catholic that led to religious strife and finally his execution. But he also began the first formal sittings of Cabinet Ministers.

Owing to this English origins, the roles, duties, powers and responsibilities of Ministers are as established there and modified with time and peculiar traditions of each country. In England and as in America, Ministers are called Cabinet Secretaries, but as they say, a rose by any other name is a rose.

In England, Ministers though serve at the pleasure of the Queen, are actually from the winning party or coalition of majority parties. In America, the President appoints Ministers. In England, the Ministers who number 22 are in charge of their Ministries and are collectively in charge of the Government. In America, the Ministers who are 15 are merely glorified Presidential advisers as powerful civil servants head the Ministerial Departments. Our Constitution as is now, like in many other areas, didn’t decide whether we are a presidential system like America or parliamentary like England. Though our Ministers are non-parliamentarians like America, their roles are more than merely advisory. Our Ministers are therefore a mongrel by being both presidential advisors and heads of their ministries. We have constitutionalised this mongrel system in Article 153.

As advisers, the Ministers must singly or jointly, give our President advice that is candid, honest, open and above all intelligent. It therefore behooves them to carry out due diligence before giving their advise.

It will be sad and tragic that day, when our President makes a public pronouncement on same policy that will be embarrassing based on advise he received from our Ministers.

From now henceforth, every pronouncement Uhuru Kenyatta makes, must have undergone such filtration that it is devoid of any error. With a cabinet of fifteen plus highly qualified technocrats, the President speeches must be like the Pope’s; infallible.

As heads of their respective Ministries, the buck now stops with each Minister. When there is rot, inefficiency or scandal in the Ministry or department or State Corporation under it, the Minister must take moral responsibility and go home, whilst the individual culpable officers take criminal responsibility. The days of feigning ignorance are long gone. As Minister for Foreign Affairs, if some official in our Embassy in Timbuktu (if we have one there) decides to sell our passports, even if Ms. Amina Mohamed is not aware, she must fall on her sword. Collectively, the Ministers have to co-own all Government policies, even if they personally disagree with them.

The Kibaki 10 years were marked with open display of Ministers taking opposite sides. It was one of the glaring failures of Kibaki’s presidency. Uhuru has to retrieve the famed bakora of his father and whip the Ministers to line.

Dissent and disagreements have to be within the walls of State House. Once the Cabinet meeting ends, those internal disputes are left behind. Every Minister has to lose their self in the collective. No one forced them to accept the appointment. Their personal egos, beliefs and backgrounds are surrendered to the cabinet body. To enable the Cabinet perform their duties and take up personal responsibility, they must re-make the Ministries. The first place to begin is to dissolve all state corporations. State corporations are an extension of the Executive and have no security of tenure.

As long as they are left as they are, the sins and malaise of yesterday will be brought to today. Dissolving and reconstitution of all parastatals is the paramount duty of every Minster. As is written, “… except a corn of wheat falls and dies, it abides alone, but if it dies, it brings forth much fruit.” (John 12:24). And this is true of all revolutions. We all look forward to these five years of political experimentation. The Ministers can choose to be like the eagle or the man with a virgin. One exercises power with wisdom and caution and the other with irrational exuberance and hubris. Our new Cabinet is lucky to be the one to set the bar.

They can set it so low, or so high for the next cabinet. But being a young cabinet with great learning, some of who are my friends and classmates, we can all like Barack Obama on the night he won the Democratic Party primaries in 2008 say, “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we have been waiting for. We are the change we seek.”