As the sole appointing authority the
president chose permanent secretaries
as an extension to his cabinet and the
main consideration was political balance
and maintaining a grip of the country by
controlling all facets of the country.
The government, in its wisdom also
decided that it needed to be involved
as a main driver in the economy and to
achieve this end, while trying to separate
the private sector from the public sector,
it created parastatals to bridge the gap.
But soon the same control malaise that
was endemic in the public sector crept
into the parastatals as the appointments
to these firms were also done by the
president as were in time also politicized
and also became political rewards.
In the meantime the private sector with
its free enterprise spirit was quietly
creating a pool of world class competent
administrators who were taking over
multinational companies resident is
Kenya and taking those companies to
great heights.
Many private sector operatives that have
ventured into public service have done so
with a singular objective of enriching them-
selves especially in the parastatals where
raping the organization was rewarded by a
transfer to another parastatal.
institutions halted aid to Kenya and
began to put pressure on the government
to institute reforms and to appoint
competent country managers especially
in critical ministries.
Moi was being driven into a corner by
a collapsing economy with the aid taps
closed as first world countries followed
the lead of the World Bank and IMF and
also suspended aid demanding for a more
accountable and transparent government.
in the strategic areas of The Ministry of
Transport and Communications, The
Ministry of Agriculture and The ministry
of Energy.
Although the government story was
that the team had been put together to
spearhead economic recovery the Moi
government was bending backwards to
win back donor confidence in an effort to
have the foreign aid taps reopened.
The opposition, emboldened by the
international community’s tough stance
on Kenya stepped up the push to remove
Moi and KANU from power painting
them as the combination that was
bringing Kenya to its economic knees. The team hit the road running as they
brought aboard the private sector work
ethic and result orientation. Soon the
Medium Term Expenditure Framework
was in place that focused on poverty
reduction by streamlining revenues and
expenditures.
Efforts to try and renegotiate aid terms
were thwarted by the international
community’s assertion that the cabal of
corrupt officials that Moi had surrounded
himself with could not be relied on to
salvage the Kenyan economy. But the program got off to a bad start
since the technocrats were paid the scale
of salaries that they commanded in the
private sector. This salary wedge was to
prove to be the one that eventually broke
the camel’s back.
It was not lost to Kenyans that we had
created a corrupt monster fueled by
political patronage and as soon as we
got an opportunity to try and redress
the situation by political agitation we
repealed the infamous section 2A of the
constitution in 1991. That was when the Bretton Woods
officials pointed out that the country had
highly qualified personnel in the private
sector and asked the government to
recruit from the private sector a team to
spearhead a recovery program supervised
by the World bodies. A government works as a unit and there
was no way you expected the other
permanent secretaries in other ministries
to cooperate with these new kids on the
block who also had to learn how the
government bureaucracy works.
Section 2A had converted Kenya into
a one party state in 1982 after the
attempted coup and which sparked a raft
of repressive measures that consolidated
more power in the presidency, further
undermining a weak democracy. A six member dream team under the
leadership of Richard Leakey was
constituted in mid1999 from the private
sector and these high level technocrats
were tasked in crafting a recovery plan for
the country. After this abortive coup the Moi
presidency became more paranoid and
that became the true genesis of tribal
politics that saw politicians retreat into
tribal cocoons and the start of total
disregard of merit in the appointment to
state jobs. Richard Leakey was appointed the
Secretary to the Cabinet and the Head of
the Civil Service while two of his team
became the Permanent Secretary in The
Ministry of Finance and Planning and
the other as the Financial Secretary to
underpin financial accountability. As expected the country plunged into
economic decline and the Bretton Woods The other members of the team took
leadership as Permanent Secretaries
It was apparent that we had entrepreneurial
talent in Kenya and we had many highly
qualified nationals but the puzzle was
why were we still languishing in relative
poverty and the fruits of the so called
independence were not being felt across
the board
52 MAL31/19 ISSUE
But it was soon apparent to the team that
the government was grappling with a
bloated civil service and with the efficiency
of the private sector mentality the team
got to work to pare down the workforce.
A retrenchment program was put into
place although it was vigorously fought by
the Department of Personnel Management
then under the leadership of the former
PC Joseph Kaguthi, who was eventually
sacked for opposing implementation.
This was an unpopular move since up
to then the only place where you got
employed for life and job performance was
not in the equation was the government.
In government you were employed to