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Kenya: Country Needs a Lean, Clean Cabinet
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The Nation (Nairobi)
OPINION
27 March 2008
Posted to the web 26 March 2008
Alphayo Otieno
Nairobi
THE POST-ELECTION STORM is settling down and a change is taking place on the economic front; a change on the political front must follow.
Which is why the new Cabinet to be appointed by President Kibaki and Mr Raila Odinga must promise one fact: not to be yet another tale of betrayal.
And the buck does not just stop with the two: the entire Kenyan polity must change in its message, tone and focus.
Rewards for loyalty must have no place in the appointments. The focus must be on a lean and efficient bureaucracy that is capable of delivering the greatest good to the greatest number.
The guiding ethos of the coalition must be of a ruthlessly businesslike instinct to cut the fat, strip waste, sack the incompetent and pare down public administration to its essentials.
The new Cabinet must, therefore, be composed of persons capable of focusing on waste, maladministration, extravagance, incompetence and drift.
By the mid-1990s, what is known as "government" had effectively ceased to exist in most African countries. In its place sprung a "vampire" State in which government had been hijacked by people who used the State machinery to enrich themselves, cronies and tribesmen.
Eventually the "vampire state" metastasizes into a "coconut republic" and implodes when excluded groups rebel. Examples are Somalia (1993), Rwanda (1994), Burundi (1995), Zaire (1996), Sierra Leone (1998), Liberia (1999), Cote d'Ivoire (2000), and Togo (2005).
Under pressure from Western donors to reform their abominable systems, they will only implement the barest minimal cosmetic reform to keep aid flowing.
Ask them to cut bloated state bureaucracies or government spending and they will set up a "Ministry of Less Government Spending'. Ask them to establish better systems of governance and they will set up a "Ministry of Good Governance" (Tanzania).
ASK THEM TO CURB CORRUPTION and they will set up an "Anti-Corruption Commission" with no teeth and then sack the commissioner if he gets too close to the fat cats (Kenya).
Ask them to establish democracy and they will empanel a coterie of fawning sycophants to write the electoral rules, toss opposition leaders into jail, hold fraudulent elections, and return themselves to power (Cote d'Ivoire, Rwanda).
Ask them to place more reliance on the private sector and they will create a Ministry of Private Enterprise (Ghana). Ask them to privatise inefficient State-owned enterprises and they will sell them off at fire-sale prices to their cronies (Uganda).
The new Cabinet must lock out characters who will sing like parrots and boogie to the tune of the President or premier.
Of greater concern should be the quality of ministers appointed. It is naive to imagine that anyone can function as minister. A minister should learn his job description through detailed discussions with professionals, and a serious study of related literature.
In the Cabinet, we need people who won't allow personal and group interests to cloud their judgment. We need individuals with the good sense to admit mistakes and learn from them.
There is another dimension to the bloated ministries. A minister comes, not alone, but with accompanying administrative paraphernalia.
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Ministerial-level bungalows, cars, travel budgets and related costs inexorably follow. And a visible ring of armed security men becomes a new status symbol.
The size of the Cabinet and the qualifications for ministers are left uncovered by our Constitution. Only real constitutional reform will save such coconut republics from implosion.
Mr Otieno is director of AlphoNan Communications and a journalist based in the US
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