Public jobs should be about performance, not patronage

By Ken Opalo

Kenya: The Bible says in Luke 6:45 that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. Going by this excellent heuristic device from the Good Book, Kenyans have a lot of reasons to distrust our politicians.

The reaction among the political elite to the recent parastatal job appointments by President Uhuru Kenyatta is a case in point. Patronage organised through ethnicity dominated the discussion; it was all about watu wetu. Forget the need for competence or representation of the face of Kenya in the public service as required by the Constitution. Ethnic exclusion and the sharing of spoils among the lucky few at the high table of the Jubilee government was the primary concern.

Ethnicity is the millstone that continues to keep us stuck to the ground as a nation. Yet our politicians continue to feed the beast with cavalier statements day in day out. Of course there is a need for ethnic balance in the public service. Even advanced democracies ensure that the most visible public offices in the land represent the faces of the wider public in order to give a sense that everyone is welcome at the high table. Allowing everyone at the table also increases the chances of policy success. As I have argued before, it is absurd to have people from the same ethnic groups run everything.

Sometimes it requires a local of Marsabit to know how to deal with the problems facing Marsabit County. If only people from Migori are given vital jobs then they will only focus on what they know best – Migori – at the expense of the rest of the country. This kind of situation is both bad politics and a recipe for failure of government policy. It is as simple as that.

The President’s choices of people to appoint to key public service jobs are a clear indication of his priorities. Some leaders use public service appointments for patronage to reward loyalists. Others go for professionalism, and appoint their supporters to ambassadorships or award them plum government contracts.

Countries in which leaders opt for the former often descend into corruption and widespread inefficiencies in the public service. Those that choose the latter also have corruption, but because of the profit motive and an incentive to keep getting more contracts, the result is that at the very minimum some things get done. Well-connected individuals share the loot with politicians, but their construction firms also create jobs for the common people.

By bringing retirees back into the public service, it appears that President Kenyatta chose patronage over competence. It ought to be the case that the higher up one is in the public service the harder they should work.

So when we appoint old people to these jobs, who then also proceed to hire old people as their assistants and lower level managers we end up with public servants that are physically incapable of doing their job. They simply cannot juggle family, their biashara on the side, and the grueling demands of public service work. And we all know what happens whenever they are forced to choose between work and their personal life.

The lesson here is that if we insist on hiring old people as figureheads, we must be careful to hire younger people with fresh ideas and the time and physical ability to do the crazy hours required in the public service. The President does not need management consultants to tell him this. It is plain common sense.

Going back to the question of ethnicity, it is clear from the reactions of our politicians that their objections to the President’s appointments were not informed by concerns over efficiency or competence. They were primarily about patronage. Complaints about “watu wetu” being sidelined and all that was a public admission that the political class sees plum parastatal jobs as feeding troughs at the top of the patronage food chain. They also betrayed a darker side of their thinking - that the government ina wenyewe, and only they are entitled to plum government jobs. This has to stop.

In his New Year message the President stressed the importance of national unity. In the spirit of kusema na kutenda, he should ensure that public service jobs are awarded with more tact. Instead of stressing ethnicity and regional balance as the logics of his appointments, he should shift the conversation and make it about competence and ability to deliver to the Kenyan people. The fact is that choosing patronage over competence soon catches up with you. Managers are only as good as those they employ to work for them.

The writer is a PhD candidate at Stanford University and a partner at IPRE Group