Columnists

Uhuru must name powerful change champ

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Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta takes oath of office during his inauguration ceremony at Kasarani Stadium on November 28, 2017 in Nairobi. FILE PHOTO | NMG

In 2013, we all supported the idea of a Cabinet composed of technocrats. After all, the system was a requirement under the 2010 Constitution.

The arrangement presented President Uhuru Kenyatta with an opportunity to put together a core economic management team dominated by experts from the private sector.

Have cabinet secretaries performed better than cabinet ministers? In the days of yore, the cabinet functioned more or less as a national council of elders. Members approached public duty differently because they understood that they were ultimately responsible to the electorate.

In those days, cabinet ministers put a high premium on public engagement. In terms of name recognition, the ministers were known all over the country. Cabinet secretaries are different.

Their mindset is of individuals who are more at ease when making PowerPoint presentations in conferences and seminars in five-star hotels than addressing public barazas.

Today, it is very possible for a Cabinet secretary to sneak into a public gathering without being noticed. They don’t enjoy widespread name recognition across the country.

They approach their work as personal service to the appointing authority to be reciprocated by personal loyalty, obedience and respect to their godfathers.

More disruption and uncertainty was to come with the advent of the individuals who were tapped from the private sector to take up the new office of ‘principal secretary’- the precursor of what we used to call ‘permanent secretary’

In the past, the permanent secretary- the chief executive and accounting officer of a ministry- was appointed from within the ranks of career civil servants. He was a permanent employee of the Public Service Commission. He attended special courses in public administration both- locally and abroad- and would have served in many different government departments before being appointed to this critical position.

The principal secretary is a different animal. He is political appointee parachuted into public service to occupy a critical role without knowledge of the inner workings of the Civil Service bureaucracy.

Worse, we appointed too many of them at one go, leading to a situation where we have ministries with multiple principal secretaries.

We ended up with too many office holders who were yet to imbibe what business schools call espirit de corps. The environment spawned bureaucratic lethargy in the Civil Service.

Enough of theory. What must Mr Kenyatta consider as he begins his second term? I suggest that he appoints a high-profile change champion- a man or woman of proven integrity, expertise, and skill to work with a small selected group of team players mandated to manage change in the Civil Service.

I think the President should revisit Dr Richard Leakey’s “Dream Team” experiment. Leakey’s Dream Team members did not have a business as usual attitude. What we have now are careerists. Within weeks of his appointment, he launched a high-profile intervention in the troubled coffee industry where he was pitted against an influential and battled-hardened group of coffee politicians.

READ: Kenya in tight spot as Uhuru takes final oath

A similar investigation was ordered for the Kenya Tea Development Authority (KTDA). He intervened in the Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) where he replaced managing director Lenny Mwangola with a former executive at Kenya Breweries Ltd Joseph Munene.

Dr Leakey rubbed the power-barons of the time the wrong way when he appointed a team of auditors to investigate the affairs of the Kenya Pipeline Company – which was then treated as a cash cow by the inner circles of the Moi regime.

His keen interest and support for the Kenya Anti-Corruption Authority re-invigorated the anti-corruption crusade during his tenure at Harambee House.

He lent support and raised the profile of the Efficiency Monitoring Unit (EMU), turning what had been a moribund and poorly-funded outfit into an effective outfit.

It was the EMU which did the work that led to the prosecution for fraud of senior officers of the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development in 2001.

The Office of the Controller and Auditor-General was strengthened and the operations of the Central Tender Board have been made more transparent.

Mr Kenyatta should appoint a powerful change champion with a mandate co-ordinate and champion radical changes across the Civil Service bureaucracy.