One power paradigm that the old school presidents never had to reckon with will be very much a fact of life for Uhuru – for the first time, there will be two kitchen Cabinets
President Uhuru Kenyatta is structuring his administration in very different times and circumstances from all of his predecessors. The institution that he now occupies, the Kenyan Presidency, will be 50 years old on December 2014. It has been an intriguing five decades for the most coveted, because most powerful and influential, office in the land.
Uhuru has entered office at a time when the Presidency has been constitutionally stripped of a number of powers, prerogatives and privileges that the first two presidents, Jomo Kenyatta (1964-1978) and Daniel arap Moi (1978-2002) had moved mountains and valleys to arrogate to themselves.
The third president, Mwai Kibaki (2002-2013), presided over the slow-motion de-fanging of the Imperial Presidency, but not even he experienced a situation whereby his Cabinet nominees, as well as those to the bureaucracy, the State corporation sector and diplomatic service, all had to be vetted by third-party institutions and entities.
The appointment of President Uhuru’s first Cabinet nominees is subject to both public and parliamentary scrutiny and input. It is also very much a joint Council of Ministers nominated on a 50-50 pre-election power-sharing pact with Deputy President William Ruto.
The top Civil Service mandarins, from the head of the Service and the Secretary to the Cabinet to the Principal Secretaries (previously the Permanent Secretaries), State corporations CEOs, ambassadors and high commissioners are also subject to suitability vetting by the Public Service Commission (PSC).
A FAR CRY FROM THE IMPERIAL DAYS
All this is unprecedented in Kenya. All of President Uhuru’s predecessors, beginning with his own father’s imperious example, had carte blanche over all appointments to all high offices of state.
Presidents Kenyatta, Moi and Kibaki (in his first term, 2002-2007) were the hirers and the firers, announcing their appointees with all the portent of Moses coming down Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments tablets.
And when they fired the hired help, from Vice President to PS and everywhere else in-between and below, they did so with a godlike unpredictability, finality and ruthlessness.
Among other things, this all-powerful state of affairs converted the Presidency into a national command post of micro-management that induced a control-freak mindset of phenomenal proportions.
During the Sixth Parliament, for instance, in the period 1983-88, President Moi and his powerbrokers decided to engineer the removal of the security of tenure of the Attorney General and the judges of the High Court of Kenya, making it possible to fire them with no more ceremony than an announcement over the State broadcaster’s radio lunchtime news, the same way as all other Presidential appointees.
Then Attorney General Amos Wako and the entire High Court Bench put on a very glad face indeed and moved with alacrity to fulfill the Imperial Presidency’s wishes, smiling broadly, bowing and scraping every inch of the way, apparently mightily grateful for being relieved of the burden of security of tenure.
During the Fourth Parliament (1979-82), President Moi dispatched Vice President Mwai Kibaki and Attorney General Charles Njonjo to Parliament as the mover and the seconder of the constitutional amendment that converted Kenya from a de facto one-party state to a de jure one-party state, effectively transforming Kanu into the only legitimate political party in the land.
After the 1988 general election, Moi dropped Kibaki as VP and demoted him to minister for Health. In Kibaki’s place Moi appointed Dr Josphat Njuguna Karanja, whom he proceeded to treat with all the dignity of a disposable napkin, felling him after barely a year in office amidst extraordinary scenes of a ruthlessly orchestrated no-confidence vote in Parliament. Another don, Prof George Saitoti, replaced Karanja and was in office until 1997.
After the 1997 General Election, President Moi simply omitted both to reappoint Vice President Saitoti and to fill the vacancy. Moi left the position vacant for the next 14 months, during which he jetted out of the country frequently.
And then Moi reappointed Saitoti so casually and so brusquely, by means of a roadside declaration at Limuru where he had stopped his motorcade to chat with fruit and vegetable vendors, that the appointee probably did not believe his ears until he actually saw the letter of reappointment.
In 2002, Moi again dropped Saitoti and this time chose his first non-Kikuyu appointee to the post in 24 long years, Musalia Mudavadi, who was in office for only 90 days before Kanu crashed out of power and Kibaki entered office as president.
KIBAKI FIRED ENTIRE CABINET
In 2005, after his government lost the Yes vote to the No vote in Kenya’s first ever national referendum, on the then proposed new constitution, President Kibaki addressed the nation on live radio and TV for barely five minutes, announcing tersely that he had fired the entire Cabinet and all assistant ministers with the exception of Vice President Moody Awori and AG Wako. He then took his sweet time reconstituting the Cabinet, and when he did, he left out the Orange Democratic Movement . This unilateralist manoeuvre straightaway signaled there would be hell to pay at the 2007 general election.
These were imperious options and scenes that Kenyans will never again behold emanating from the Presidency, unless under conditions of world war or some national state of emergency or other, now totally unforeseen, catastrophe.
The first two presidents expended enormous energies and resources and tens of thousands of secret police man hours in the prevention of the growth and development of centres of power outside State House and the Presidential retinue of the day. This was also true of the Third President’s first term.
The Fourth President of Kenya has begun his administration with the nearest fairly autonomous centre of power located precisely where all his predecessors brooked no autonomy whatsoever, not even freedom of conscience – his deputy.
No vice-president of Kenya, not even the Eleventh and the last of the breed, the now itinerant Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka, has enjoyed the positioning and designation of Deputy President Ruto.
Indeed, not even Raila Odinga, who, as Prime Minister, was co-Principal in the Grand Coalition Government of 2008-first quarter 2013, enjoyed a position that is actually in the power precincts of the Presidency.
When he lifts his gaze and looks over Deputy President Ruto’s shoulder to the rest of the government edifice, President Uhuru beholds a scene that his father and Moi would never have countenanced.
The centres of power outside State House are in place and in great multiplicity. The National Assembly is a much enlarged legislature, comprising the Eleventh Parliament and the first Senate for 45 years.
The 47 county governors are now duly in office and devolved government has begun. One of the most independent institutions under the new order is the Committee for the Implementation of the Constitution (CIC), an entity and its chairman, Nairobi lawyer Charles Nyachae, that former President Kibaki is unlikely to remember with any fondness.
When the 47 governors called on President Uhuru at State House, Nairobi, he told them he was well aware that there would be teething problems in the relationship between the national centre of power and the devolution institutions, including between the governors and the presidency. Speaking off the cuff, he said a baby learns to walk before it can run and there were significant nods and grunts of assent all round.
UHURUTO’S FIRST BAPTISM OF FIRE
One power paradigm that the old school presidents never had to reckon with will be very much a fact of life for Uhuru – for the first time in the Kenyan Presidency, there will be two kitchen cabinets, the President’s and the Deputy President’s.
All previous principal assistants to the president had their handlers but they were kept well outside the frame, leaving the presidential powerbrokers at center-stage, from the prototype brokers of the first Kenyatta era, to the Moi and Kibaki dispensations.
And then there is the factor, almost a fact of life, of the baptism of fire that is suffered by every incoming presidential administration. In Jomo’s case it was the double whammy of the East African military mutinies of January 1964 and the Somali secessionist Shifta insurgency in the then Northern Frontier District.
In Moi’s case it was the August 1, 1982 coup attempt by disgruntled elements of the Kenya Air Force supported by sections of a then nascent activist civil society sector allegedly horrified by the establishment of the de jure one-party state.
In Kibaki’s case it was the combination of the collapse of the MoU with Raila Odinga, the ending in disarray of the Bomas constitutional review process and the defeat at the 2005 referendum.
From what direction will President Uhuru’s baptism of fire come from, internally speaking and setting aside the ICC factor? An early test will doubtless be the content of the final report of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) which will be presented to him in early May and to all Kenyans by mid-May.
All indications are that the TJRC report is an explosive document and one that turns the light of scrutiny on some of the most sordid things that the Old School Presidency tried its damnedest to keep under wraps, particularly the first Kenyatta administration. At this rate, Raila’s Cord, now the opposition, would appear to be the least of President Uhuru’s worries.
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