How politicised public service and toothless Parliament have failed us

The Public Service Commission (PSC) chairperson Francis Meja during the swearing in. [Courtesy; Judiciary]

Kenya’s Public Service Commission (PSC) was meant to be the constitutional bulwark against patronage. Article 234 of the Constitution gave it sweeping powers: recruit on merit, enforce values and principles, and shield the bureaucracy from political capture.

Sixty-four years after independence, that promise lies in ruins. The Public Service remains a patronage machine that is bloated, inefficient and ruinously expensive while the very parliamentary committee charged with overseeing the PSC has become its enabler rather than its enforcer.