President's Cabinet reshuffle: The major flops and why it was a failure

Yesterday, the President, in a move that was awaited by many Kenyans, reshuffled his cabinet. We had hope for the new cabinet and saw it as a way that we can finally fight this giant menace called corruption. Unfortunately, for me, I was highly disappointed. Granted, five of the appointed Cabinet Secretaries, I agree with STRONGLY, but there were major flops.

A couple of factors stood out for me. One was that the President increased the number of Cabinet Secretaries as well as State departments. Now, as a country that is grappling with major cash crisis and numerous unsolved money loss scandals, one would expect one of the measures the government would take is here to reduce its wage bill.

So what was the President's ultimate plan? To increase efficiency? I feel that it would have been more effective to merge the positions and ensure that they are each accountable for their work. He shouldn’t have given a second chance to some people who clearly haven’t shown that they deserve it. Remember, many cooks in the kitchen spoil the broth.

Another major one fail is the 2/3 gender rule. According to the rule, out of the 20 Cabinet Secretary positions, at least 7 should be given to either gender. Only five allocated positions were women. Now we have to pose the question, is it that there no qualified women to be Cabinet Secretaries (which i highly doubt) or can this be taken as an attack of the 'female species'? Just two more women and we would have probably saved ourselves all this fuss.

Another striking miss is the cultural representation. It was hard to miss the screaming cultural imbalance in the allocations. The President should have taken this opportunity to show that he is indeed committed to battling the rampant tribalism growing in the country. He should have gone for new and creative leaders that are motivated, not the same old characters that frankly did nothing much in their dockets.

Not to mention, that if all these names sail through, that would mean that there will be three by-elections. Meaning more of the taxpayers’ money will be used.