There are a few things in the background. One of them, of course, is corruption. The President finds himself surrounded by a web of corruption in that if he wants to procure a pen, the system around him immediately wants to find a way of being corrupt.
Secondly, there is the tradition and culture of civil service. If you ever approached a civil servant and told the civil servant to do something in a new way, you are likely to face resistance because the civil service is not innovative. It has been there for a long time.
The budgeting process, for example, is the same. If an office buys milk and flowers every morning, they will buy them still even if the boss is there or not. Those are the issues that President Uhuru Kenyatta is facing. There is the side of corruption and there is the resistance to change.
Having understood that, the question that must be asked is, why Uhuru chose the Cabinet he picked. Appointment of the Cabinet is a kind of political settlement.
It is like he has a coalition government where if he touches any CS or PS while fighting corruption, the question would become why has he picked on our own.
The psychology of Kenyans and the political situation have put the President in a tight corner. Any move he makes towards the Cabinet is a political settlement. It is almost as if this Cabinet was hired for him. Any time he wants to touch them, which we have seen even in the fight against corruption, he has political considerations to make. The President is handicapped.
Let us remember that when he was choosing this Cabinet he had to make both political and tribal considerations. The senior officers in government were given jobs based on political settlement.
These are political appointees.
The proof of this is that every time someone is arrested, like we saw during the DCJ Mwilu’s arrest, it became a Nasa issue. When other people are arrested, it becomes we are targeting Ruto’s side. These are creatures of a political settlement, so if I was picked politically then you have to fire me politically.
The political analyst spoke to the Star