Ruto faces daunting task of forming new Cabinet amid growing pressure

President William Ruto. [File, Standard]

Among the Chinese heritage, there is a proverb that says a crisis is an opportunity to ride a dangerous wind. President John F. Kennedy once said that the word crisis is composed of two characters: one represents danger and the other represents opportunity.

The foregoing quotes would be quite relevant and practical to President Ruto as he navigates through a legitimacy test that he finds himself in. The decision to dismiss all his Cabinet Secretaries, except the CS for Foreign Affairs, rewinds the clock of history to November 23, 2005. On that day, President Mwai Kibaki dissolved his entire Cabinet after suffering a humiliating defeat in a referendum that sought to enact the current Constitution.  

Then quoted in an article by the Voice of America as an opposition official, William Ruto advised President Kibaki that his work was cut out. He was referring to the horrendous task of putting together a new Cabinet and healing the wounds of the past. And now, President Ruto finds himself borrowing from the script of the late former president.

While the choices of this past week mirror each other, the circumstances are markedly different. However, there are noticeable similarities in the events that lead the two men into a somewhat shared fate. President Kibaki then failed to correctly read the mood of the country in his push for a Constitution that even key members of his Cabinet were opposed to.

On his part, President Ruto has failed to correctly read the mood of the people in an obsessive push to pass oppressive taxes and levies. This is coupled with obvious incompetence and zero accountability on the part of his government. This may explain the unanimity in collective hate for the whole of the sacked Cabinet.

However, of great importance are the lessons we can draw from Kibaki’s missteps in reconstituting his Cabinet on December 7, 2005. Seven nominees for assistant ministerial positions outrightly rejected their appointments shortly after their names were announced to the nation. This would imply that the president had not consulted with them before nomination. More fundamentally, it is evidentially true that Kibaki failed to heal the wounds of the nation if the disastrous Post Election Violence (PEV) of 2007 is anything to go by.

Left for debate

The question left for debate is: Will President Ruto learn from his own failures and those of Kibaki 19 years ago?

In his book ‘Good to Great’, Jim C. Collins, a renowned leadership author and coach, argues that when things go horribly wrong in a team, the team leader must look straight into the mirror and blame the person they see in there. On the contrary, when the team does exemplary well, the leader must look out of the window and assign full credit and praise to the team members that they see in the courtyard.

Further, Collins adduces unimpeachable evidence that from his sample, all the companies that managed to move from good to great had a leader who got the right people into the right seats in the bus, at their critical transition moments. Jim Collins's masterpiece would be highly useful to the President before he settles on his next team.

There are three obvious reasons why the President must take extra care in his new appointments. To start with, Ruto faces not purely a quick-fix political crisis like his predecessors before, but a systemic economic failure that has left a whole generation in despair. Looking at the attempts to bring the opposition chiefs into his court during the signing of the IEBC Bill is a clear indicator of a grave misdiagnosis of the nature and magnitude of the crisis before him.

Anyone who assumes the Gen-Z wave is purely an anti-government protest is completely misadvised. The movement represents a total rejection of the pre-existing political order that has dominated over the past six decades. Cutting deals with presumably tribal kings would not work this time round. It is instrumental for the President to note that the Azimio brigade has been unable to cash any political dividends from the wave. So trying to seek advice or form a government of national unity through Azimio leadership will be a cropper ab initio.

Two is the fact that it takes longer to rebuild an economy that has been destroyed systematically over an extended period. To a great disadvantage of the President, he and his men have been key actors in the team that presided over the systemic destruction of the economy that now he must rebuild. Further, he’s presumably a dominant beneficiary of the mess created and that is fueling the generational anger before him.

Thus, he has to come to the sad reality that he can no longer constitute a Cabinet based on political calculations of 2027 nor seek to extend rewards to allies from 2022 campaigns. The burden beforehand is purely to preserve his presidency for the remaining 37 months of his term. The people themselves will decide what happens in 2027 based on our Constitutional and democratic order.

My gut feeling tells me that there will be a political blood bath in the ballot. This is unless the Gen-Z and Millennial generation are significantly derailed from their agenda. Therefore, it is a futile attempt to try to maintain any semblance or find solutions to the pre-existing political order.

Three would be the challenge of finding men and women willing to face the public scrutiny of these past few days or board a sinking ship. Reflecting on the decades-old systemic corruption and abuse of power that permeates across our entire national fabric, it would be difficult to find clean individuals through the usual appointive political processes.

That means the president will have to find men and women most likely unknown to him, and probably ready to challenge his domineering persona in public policy. Additionally, the President would have to free himself from the captivity of the ‘me’ and ‘I’ syndrome evident in all his public engagements. To lead a successful team that can steer the country away from the trap that led the Kibaki administration into PEV crisis in 2007, the president must be willing to listen and let his Cabinet shine away from his shadow.

This leads us to the final question of the type of men and women must the President bring on board in his new team.

Faceless leadership

As of the time of writing this article, the Gen Zs faceless leadership had already issued a list of minimum demands of the qualities the new appointees must meet as a minimum. On social media, there is evidentially ongoing mobilization for nationwide peaceful protests on Tuesday 16, that is, next week.

While it is my considered view that the President must be allowed some space to choose his new team as dictated by the letter and spirit of the Constitution, it would be wise for him to take into consideration the attributes raised by the people. However, the revolutionary champions must not appear to want improbable public reforms outside the established Constitutional order.

Consistent with my position throughout this ongoing crisis, the exercise of our constitutional and democratic rights cannot be devoid of our individual and collective responsibilities. After all, those who seek to assume the power enshrined in our Constitution must prove themselves capable of handling such power with dignity and solely for the service of the people. To behave otherwise would mean they also are driven by individual greed that is self-destructing the Kenya Kwanza blue-eyed boys.

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