The Standard Group Plc is a
multi-media organization with investments in media platforms spanning newspaper
print operations, television, radio broadcasting, digital and online services. The
Standard Group is recognized as a leading multi-media house in Kenya with a key
influence in matters of national and international interest.
President William Ruto announced the new Principal Secretary nominees on March 20, 2025. [File, Standard]
As at the time of writing this column, there is a raging debate as to whether the youth can hitch their wagon on the benevolence of the political class. This debate has been generated by the new list of Principal Secretary nominees that was announced last week. Young people, whose parties are stakeholders in the broad-based arrangement, have expressed discontent with the appointments. Their cry is that more deserving individuals, the most talented, hardworking party mobilisers were sidelined. But we cannot all be appointed, certainly.
This awakened me most profoundly to the needs of our time. The need to build a functioning economy with a thriving private sector whose primary focus is to become a net exporter. With our population growth rate steadily heading to 60 million in just a couple of years, to rely on state sector jobs is to court disaster. But state sector jobs are the only alternative when we don’t build a productive economy.
This therefore is an opportunity to take stock of where we are as a people, socially and politically. The civil service is the backbone of any state, the world over. A principal secretary is the the senior-most technical person in a ministry.
Currently, our civil service is in tatters, too ethinicised and politicised. It has been in need of a shake-up. But not the type of a shake-up that is blind to competence and impersonality. There was a time in the recent past when state appointments would give you the impression that Kenya was an ethnic duopoly.
This leads me to my first take home from the recent nominations. That they were more representative than any appointments that we have had since this administration came to town, is a powerful positive signal in the right direction. Inclusion of various segments our society in public appointments is a constitutional imperative that we cannot ignore when its convenient.
The inclusion anticipated in the Constitution as one of our national values and principle of governance was intended to cure the problem of ethnic exceptionalism that has plagued our public sector for a long time.
Secondly, all who were appointed had the requisite qualifications. This should incentivise us to engage in fierce and sustained public policy advocacy to ensure that the government delivers and provides the necessary help that our people desperately need. After these appointments, we must see a government whose guiding light is a coherent, clear-cut programmatic agenda that is calculated at availing public goods while restoring the legitimacy of the state.
Those handling government communication have maintained that this administration has done so much work. But in the same vein, we must remind them that so much still remains undone. As such, they must come off their high horses and do the sensitive work of promoting government work with humility and clarity. The President once told us that there are things, such as service delivery, that are more important to him than re-election.
Its therefore mindless for anyone to inundate us with slogans such as #KumiBilaBreak precisely at a time when the government is struggling to calm the anxieties of the people.
The communication folks in government have for two years dwelt on the cost of cooking flour to underscore Kenya Kwanza’s supposed progress. I hope they are taken for in service training forthwith. A country that is seeking to leverage on African Continental Free Trade Area to become the workshop of Africa cannot dwell on the price of unga forever. This new team must break down the government’s big ideas, package them and communicate them with clarity. These appointments must be seen as a critical building block on a long and uncharted path to national redemption.
Mr Kidi is the convener Inter Parties Youth Forum. kidimwaga@gmail.com
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The Standard Group Plc is a
multi-media organization with investments in media platforms spanning newspaper
print operations, television, radio broadcasting, digital and online services. The
Standard Group is recognized as a leading multi-media house in Kenya with a key
influence in matters of national and international interest.
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