Time to free civil service from clutches of political patronage

Public Service Cabinet Secretary Moses Kuria. [Kipsang Joseph, Standard]

That the civil service needs streamlining cannot be gainsaid. There is a political deficit around the world, not of states, but of modern states that are capable, impersonal, well organised and a guarantor of order and security.

This is because as societies pursue the promise of upward social mobility, the rate of social mobilisation rapidly outstrips the capacity of the existing institutions to accommodate new demands.

For this reason, Kenya must urgently reform its civil service. Governments are as effective as the bureaucracy upon which they are anchored. For far too long, our civil service together with security agencies were configured in such a manner that it was the unofficial, official policy to use the two institutions to contain and dominate certain sections of the country.

That is why, when President William Ruto appointed his Interior Principal Secretary from Western Kenya, it generated a lot of interest. For it had gone against the norm that a president could entrust someone who does not come from his ethnic background with a sensitive assignment.

For years, the political class has used the civil service to mask its own incompetence. Without building a strong and vibrant economy, they resorted to limited access order. Huge sectors of the economy ended up in the hands of the few at the expense of the many.

They then turned the State into de facto source of employment. Successive administrations have been packaging the public sector with all manner of political lackeys.

State sector jobs became the source of political patronage. This resulted in an inefficient public service while bloating the wage bill.

How do we, therefore, reform our public service? When Moses Kuria suggested that we should put all civil servants on contract, a friend joked that the civil service cannot be run like someone managing an employment bureau for unskilled workers going to the Gulf countries.

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To increase efficiency, a thorough audit is imperative. Weed out all those who joined the civil service using fake academic papers. Make sure we have a public service that is truly anchored on meritocracy. Match assignment with technical competence.

This should apply to the two levels of government. It's laughable when a holder of a degree in theology (no offence to theologians) is in charge of construction.

A lot of time is wasted as the civil servant learns on the job. Further, we must not run the civil service as though we are a primitive society. It's impossible to have an efficient civil service when reciprocal altruism and kin selection overrides other considerations in appointments.

A deliberate effort to de-politicise the civil service requires the fierce urgency of now. A bureaucracy staffed with a politicians’ cronies almost inevitably performs poorly.

Without the threat of bankruptcy, like in the private sector and no easy matrices of performance, a civil service stuffed with patronage appointees becomes very hard to reform for every effort will be construed by the patronage beneficiaries as an onslaught against them.

That is why when President Mwai Kibaki came in 2003, there was an outcry by Rift Valley politicians that they were being targeted. But this again is where Mr Kibaki dropped the ball.

For every appointment revocation of someone from Rift Valley, he had a ready replacement from Central Kenya. These appointees then made sure everyone they brought in was from their backyard.

The security agencies have equally suffered what other commentators have described as ‘tribalised security agencies’. It's for this reason that appointment of Francis Ogolla to the helm of Kenya’s military together with the recent promotions in the military are a welcome break.

-Mr Mwaga is the convenor of Inter-parties Youth Forum. [email protected]