Kenya needs a Cabinet with purpose

The first to join were four members of the opposition party, the Orange Democratic Party, namely, Hassan Joho, Wycliffe Oparanya, Opiyo Wandayi and John Mbadi.

Last week, it was the turn of allies of former President Uhuru Kenyatta, William Kabogo, Mutahi Kagwe and Lee Kinyanjui waiting to join.

What type and shape of Cabinet are we likely to see and what should we expect in terms of effectiveness of the State apparatus given the way party coalitions are shaping up?

What is the quality and calibre of the people being appointed to the Cabinet to run a country in the middle of economic doldrums?

What do you discern in terms of academic orientations of the new teams that are going to manage economic policy both at the level of the National Treasury and in the new hordes of economic advisers that have been appointed by President William Ruto?

These are pertinent questions because the new Cabinet has to deliver in a context of a precarious debt-reliant economy with more than a decade of static productivity and falling incomes.

It seems to me that we are headed to a higher level in terms of the logic of pork barrel politics. Political acquiescence is being purchased at a very high price and at the expense of meritocracy. It is worrisome because as we all know, pork barrel politics has had a corrosive impact on the effectiveness of the Cabinet.

If you take a serious retrospective look of Kenya today, you will not fail to notice dwindling State capacity at implementing big projects and at low cost. The central government is just too weak to deliver projects on time and at the right price.

Compounding problems for us is the fact that the county government is even weaker, accumulating stalled projects at a rapid rate and only good at spending and disbursing resources on recurrent budgets.

Today, countries are divided into high capacity States and low capacity ones. And, within this region, the government of Ethiopia is regarded as having a better record at delivering projects on time and within budget than the rest of the nations in the region, mainly because it has been rolling out big infrastructure projects in record time and at a rapid rate.

Read: Ruto names Uhuru allies Kagwe, Kabogo and Kinyanjui to Cabinet in reshuffle

Does it surprise then that we have contracted the Ethiopians to sell to us a lot of electricity from its dams? Even Rwanda, is being ranked high in terms of State capacity.

In the past, a Cabinet minister enjoyed a very high public profile. Today, some members don’t have a public profile and cannot be noticed in a crowd.

You have to scratch your brains to single out a Cabinet minister you can describe as having fire in his belly and is approaching management of public affairs better than the previous occupants.

In terms of ability to deliver results, you don’t see a Cabinet secretary you can compare with the late John Michuki.

In terms of bold and game-changing policies, I do not see something as audacious as the decisions the late David Mwiraria implemented in the early part of Mwai Kibaki’s administration the most dramatic of which was when he brought down the cash ratio by a massive margin

Interest rates on the 91-Treasury Bill tumbled from eight percent in December 2002 to below two percent in late 2003 and during the first half of 2004.

The interbank market- where banks lend to each other- was also heavily disrupted with rates falling from around six percent in early April 2003 to 0.4 percent in mid-July.

Such was the disruption that the IMF hurriedly dispatched a mission led by the Tanzanian national, Dr Godfrey Kalinga, to come Nairobi to warn us about an impending collapse of the bond market and advise the government to allow interest rates to start gliding upwards.

Today, the sense of purpose we saw during the regime of former President Kibaki does not exist. Yet we all know that the ability of a Cabinet to deliver on a proposal is an important mark of competence.

The writer is a former Managing Editor of The EastAfrican.