Recycling the old, ignoring the young?

Like corruption and insecurity, the latest appointment of 302 parastatal board members by President Uhuru Kenyatta have elicited mixed emotions from all over the country. As a result, questions have emerged about what this means for the present as well as the future of Kenya.

Just a day before the names of the appointees were released, 52 per cent of Kenyans interviewed in a survey said they believed that the country was heading in the wrong direction. These appointments have done nothing to assuage those feelings, and in fact have only served to lend credence to that particular belief.

From street barazas to social media, Kenyans could be heard bemoaning the appointment of former politicians who lost in the previous elections; relatives, lawyers and friends of current politicians; old technocrats that served in previous regimes; as well as others who seem generally incompetent.

The appointment of people who are beyond the retirement age – these venerable relics of a dying age – has especially angered the youth. "We elected a young government that had the old in mind," one fellow posted on Twitter.

To say that Kenyans are disappointed in their Government – which was elected under the guise of a "digital government" – would be the understatement of the two years of Mr Kenyatta's administration. From grand corruption scandals to unprecedented insecurity and overt political patronage, the Kenyan experience continues.

Indeed, most Kenyans today would easily identify with Dr Stockmann's sentiments in Henrik Ibsen's 1882 An Enemy of the People; "I can't stand these leaders at any price...they are like goats in a young forest; they do mischief everywhere they go. They stand in a free man's way, whichever way he turns..."

Are these anti-Government sentiments to parastatal appointments justified though? Is the leadership really to blame? Either the President appointed these people out of genuine belief in their capacity to serve, or he did it out of political expediency.

If it's the latter as many critics posit, that's just smart politics – and he is a politician! It means he made a strategic political move ahead of 2017, a strategy that is as simple as it is elegant; perform where you can to get the votes of the middle class (those who vote), and secure the votes of the poor class by appointing those who command their ethnic loyalties. Brilliant! But while he seems to understand his electorate, he has failed miserably in understanding the working man.

He cannot seem to fathom how unoriginal, how demoralising, how utterly disappointing these appointments are. But how could he, when he has an army of sycophants to defend – and explain away - his decisions no matter how untimely or ill-advised they are?

"Oh, you know, board positions are not really jobs...they have no salaries, you know, just a sitting allowance whenever they convene – and that's usually once every two or three months," they say.

Of course they won't tell you that if you sit once every two months and get a sitting allowance of Sh50,000, that just means you earn Sh25,000 every month and have time to do something else on the side – a proposal that most Kenyans, including this one, would gladly accept.

Yet we the people are as much to blame for this "injustice" as is the Government, if not more; we elected them. We lament about the "recycled politicians", yet that is exactly what we do come Election Day.

We decry the appointment of "dinosaurs", but are the youth any better at leadership? Are they not tribal and corrupt? Have they no affinity for cronyism?

For an answer, one only needs to look at the behaviour of these 'leaders of tomorrow' in our universities; with their student associations that are so ethnically constituted it's embarrassing; and their politics that are so blatantly corrupt it's unparalleled.