Tag Archives: Kikuyu

A look into Kenyatta’s new cabinet

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President Kenyatta has announced 16 of 18 cabinet secretaries in his administration. The list of names has elicited mixed reactions. On the one hand the manner of the announcement – on the steps of State House – was different, and dignified. It was much less pedestrian than what Kenyans had become used to – presidential cabinet appointments via press releases to newsrooms. Six women made the list, including in the powerful Defense and Foreign Affairs dockets. With the exception of Balala and Ngilu, all the nominees so far are not politicians.

But on the other other hand grumblings emerged on the lack of regional (read ethnic) balance in the appointments. Kenya is an ethnically fragmented country, with 11 (out of 42) ethnic groups with populations over 1 million (Kikuyu/GEMA, Luhya, Kalenjin, Luo, Kamba, Somali, Kisii, Meru (part of GEMA), Mijikenda, Turkana, Maasai). For most of the country’s history ethnicity has been a key organizing principle of politics, with people largely voting along ethnic lines for various instrumental reasons.

So what is the ethnic breakdown of Kenyatta’s cabinet so far? Here is my guestimation based on their last names: Kikuyu (3), Kalenjin (4), Somali (3), Luo (1), Meru (1), Kisii (1), Kamba (1), Luhya (1), Arab (1). Two slots remain unoccupied.

Only two groups (Kalenjins and Somalis) are clearly overrepresented in the cabinet appointments in proportion to their relative ethnic group size in the country (Kalenjin 25% vs 13.2%; Somalis 18.75 vs 6.3%). Those groups in the top ten that are underrepresented missed their “objective proportion” of the cabinet by about one slot, on average.

On an aside, historically African presidents have actually been pretty good at ethnic balancing in the appointment of cabinet ministers – as Francois, Rainer and Trebbi show in this paper. They claim to “show that African ruling coalitions are large and that political power is allocated proportionally to population shares across ethnic groups. This holds true even restricting the analysis to the subsample of the most powerful ministerial posts. We argue that the likelihood of revolutions from outsiders and the threat of coups from insiders are major forces explaining such allocations.”

If the ethnic composition of the cabinet is anything to go by, it shows the extent to which deputy president William Ruto is more of an equal than deputy to President Kenyatta. His part of the Jubilee coalition dominates the list of cabinet nominees. Or it might just be a case of Mr. Kenyatta, being president, having opted to have his half of the cabinet “represent the face of Kenya” (Kenyatta and Ruto had a 50-50 pre-election appointments sharing agreement at the formation of the Jubilee coalition).

Despite Kenyans’ relief at the end of Odinga and Kibaki’s coalition government, the era of nusu mkate might still be among us.

In related news, president Kenyatta broke one of his campaign promises by not appointing an ethnic Turkana as secretary in charge of Energy and Petroleum. Kenya’s oil discoveries have been mostly in Turkana County. The Standard reports:

Uhuru [President Kenyatta] repeated he will appoint a Turkana to head the Ministry of Energy portfolio should he take over the next Government.

Kenyatta said his Government would give first priority to locals to manage the oil resources that were discovered in the area.

“Our mandate is to ensure that every Kenyan gets equal share of national cake. But locals where such resources are found should benefit more as a right stipulated in the Constitution,” he said.

Deputy President William Ruto also broke a promise he made yesterday. He said at a presser that the cabinet will not have any politicians, yet Charity Ngilu and Najib Balala have been nominated.

Kenyatta’s Cabinet Nominees:

  1. Fred Matiang’i (Information, Communication and Technology) – Kisii
  2. Henry K. Rotich (The National Treasury) – Kalenjin
  3. James Wainaina Macharia (Health) – Kikuyu
  4. Amb Amina Mohamed (Foreign Affairs) – Somali
  5. Adan Mohammed (Industrialisation) – Somali
  6. Ann Waiguru (Devolution and Planning) – Kikuyu
  7. Davis Chirchir (Energy and Petroleum) – Kalenjin
  8. Amb Raychelle Omamo (Defence) – Luo
  9. Eng Michael Kamau (Transport and Infrastructure) – Kikuyu
  10. Phyllis Chepkosgey (East African affairs, Commerce and Tourism) – Kalenjin
  11. Prof Jacob Kaimenyi (Education) – Meru
  12. Felix Kosgey (Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries) – Kalenjin
  13. Prof Judy Wakhungu (Environment Water and Natural Resources) – Luhya
  14. Dr Hassan Wario (Sports, Culture and Arts) – Somali
  15. Najib Balala (Mining) – Arab
  16. Charity Ngilu (Lands, Housing and Urban Development) – Kamba
  17. Ministry of Labour, Social Security and Services (Vacant)
  18. Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government (Vacant)

Justice, the ICC and Kenyan Politics

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A panel of judges at the ICC will issue their ruling tomorrow afternoon on whether or not six accused Kenyans will stand trial. The six include two declared presidential candidates. Either way the ruling will have a non-trivial impact on the pursuit of justice for the victims of the 2007-08 post-election violence (PEV). It will also significantly shape the politics of coalition building in this year’s general elections.

Because of the ICC process, the Kenyan justice system has put on ice its own process of holding the perpetrators of the PEV to account. A non-confirmation of the charges against at least some of the six co-accused will add the 2007-08 PEV to the long list of crimes against Kenyans, many of which have been committed by the high and mighty, that have gone unpunished.

Justice is political. Therefore, there is no doubt that if the process of prosecuting the crimes committed in the PEV returns to Kenya none of the big fish will be held accountable. That is the sad truth.

This is why despite the noisy political environment, a majority of the PEV victims (and other Kenyans) still back the ICC process. At the very minimum they want justice to appear to be served.

At the moment the problem of justice remains a worry largely monopolized by the 300,000 or so Kenyans in IDP camps and the relatives of the over 1,300 who were killed. [The media and the political class are squarely to blame for this shameful situation.] For the rest of the country, focus has shifted to the politics of the general elections due later this year. To this we now turn.

Two of the accused, William Ruto and Uhuru Kenyatta have declared their interest in the presidency. Mr. Kenyatta is currently the second most preferred presidential candidate after Prime Minister Raila Odinga. Mr. Ruto, while not as popular nationally, still commands a sizeable chunk of the votes in the country’s most populous province – the Rift Valley. The Rift Valley has also been the hotbed of political violence in country’s history, most of it over land.

A confirmation of the charges will seriously dent the presidential ambitions of Messrs Ruto and Kenyatta. It will make it harder for either of them to sell their candidacy outside of their immediate ethnic constituency. It will also give their opponents (and there are plenty) an opportunity to hold themselves as the clean candidates that ought to succeed Kibaki. Needless to say, a non-confirmation would bolster the duo’s campaigns. What will this mean for the general election?

It is common knowledge that the man to beat in the 2012 election will be Mr. Odinga. The two scenarios above will impact the outcome of the election mainly through their influence on the coalition building abilities of the anti-Odinga crowd.

More on this tomorrow in reaction to the ICC ruling.

kenyan ethnic groups arming ahead of 2012

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I just read this on the BBC and can’t stop wishing that it is all hype. The report quotes a number of Kenyans – mostly from the Rift Valley – who seem to be acknowledging that segments of the Kenyan population are arming ahead of the 2012 elections. And this time round instead of machetes and bows and arrows they are getting guns, machine guns. A Kenyan working for an NGO in Eldoret confirmed the BBC report.

I am assuming, or rather hoping that the Kenyan intelligence community is not sleeping on the job like they did in the run-up to the 2007 elections. If people are buying machine guns it can only mean one thing. If Kenya is ever to have a civil war it will be fought in the Rift Valley. Other political conflicts in Kenya have always been over the sharing of divisible goods – mainly payoffs in terms of good jobs and chances for sleaze among the many ethnic entrepreneurs that populate the Kenyan political landscape. But the conflict in the Rift Valley will be about a somewhat indivisible good – LAND. Those that own the land will not let go or share it easily, more so if they have machine guns. And those that think that the land was taken from them wrongly will perhaps  also be willing to fight for the land, more so if they also have machine guns.

The contest in 2012 just seems to get messier and messier. Kibaki should consider calling a snap election and then stepping down. That may catch the plotters unawares and bring a decisive victory to one party or the other. May be then the government will be able to deal with all these issues – land, judicial reforms, security etc – without the many distractions that the current government faces.

And in other news, Jaindi Kisero (one of my favorite columnists) has a piece on the slightly positive signs the Kenyan economy has shown so far. If only the nation’s political class would get its act togehter…

I also found this discussion on the IMF and WB interesting.

One, more thing.  Last week I attended a talk by Paul Romer on Charter cities. The idea is as exciting as it is provocative. I still don’t know what to make of it though. Read more about it here.