Post by Onyango Oloo on Oct 23, 2005 1:10:47 GMT 3
Nyong'o Says Kibaki Has Failed to Give Direction
Interview with the Sunday Standard, October 23, 2005
QUESTION: Professor, you have talked lately on the need for the Cabinet to meet. What does the country miss when the Cabinet does not meet, as it hasn’t for four months now?
ANYANG’ NYONG'O: On an issue like the forth-coming referendum, the Cabinet needed to sit and agree or disagree. When Harold Wilson was taking Britain to a referendum in 1975 on whether to join the EU, his Cabinet met, and agreed that they had disagreed.
Wilson said he would support 'Yes' vote, but freed his Cabinet to campaign the way each member chose. In our case, we never did that. I only heard the President saying he would lead the ‘Yes’ vote while colleagues called for our sacking.
Q: How then did the referendum, or the Wako Draft, become a government project?
A: People who feel they must be sycophantic to the President just started calling us traitors because we did not support his stand. You cannot be a traitor to your own conscience. The President should have met the Cabinet and convinced us to support ‘Yes’.
Q: Did the Cabinet endorse the process that gave birth to the Kilifi and Wako drafts?
A: I never attended a Cabinet meeting that endorsed any of those processes and I am not aware of any. I came from abroad one day and found a notice in Parliament’s board asking MPs to go to Kilifi to negotiate the Bomas Draft. I am more important than that.
I am a Cabinet minister and I take orders from the President. I expected the President to tell me what to do. Anybody with a function can put a notice in Parliament. I thought the President would give direction. He did not.
Q: Who sent the Cabinet on leave, there was a report that the Cabinet has been released to campaign?
A: Those are the things I am talking about. I have not seen a circular saying we are on leave. The Secretary to the Cabinet is Francis Muthaura, not Alfred Mutua. As a Cabinet minister, I don’t want to be an errand boy of Mutua, or whoever is sending him.
Q: Professor, has President Kibaki let you down? You sound as if he has?
A: Not me alone. Kibaki has let the entire nation down. At a time like this, the country needed leadership, not threats or warnings and indecision.
Q: Do you feel a vacuum in the leadership of the nation?
A: I would rather not comment on that. But there is a strong desire for inspiration and leadership. This country needs what Nelson Mandela gave to South Africa when he was released. The people felt there was life and hope. Every South African felt important.
Q: How would you summarise how you arrived at the current awkward situation?
A: One of our biggest failures was the inability to manage a coalition. One thing we must blame Kibaki for is his failure to lead a coalition and his decision to rely on cabal politics. It is no wonder that corruption came back. We are relying on the State instead of a party.
Q: What has absence of a party got to do with existence of corruption?
A: A party can discipline members. Right now, we are relying on the State that has civil servants employed to fight corruption. Those civil servants are employed by the ministers and are under those ministers. There is little a civil servant can do. Ministers are politicians. There are things they cannot discuss with civil servants, including the Head of Civil Service. But they would discuss those things with party leaders.
Q: Have you discussed these things with the President?
A: I tried to tell the President from the start not to let Narc die. I asked the President to consult and even form a committee to help him run various things. Nothing doing. I kept my calm. But with the referendum, I decided that we have to intervene politically or the nation sinks. The Wako Draft is the emergence of cabal politics at its worst.
Q: Did the President see sense in what you were telling him? Did he appreciate?
A: He appreciated, but nothing ever worked. He never had organs for consultations. Narc institutions were destroyed. Things were left to civil servants. The Head of Civil Service became the Prime Minister by default. Democracy relies on party institutions.
Q: Aren't there things you are happy with in this government?
A: Political decay has messed us up. But the State is running. Young, energetic ministers are working and I am happy with what we have done at the Planning ministry. In the recent UN meeting in New York, Kenya was the only country in the world that delivered needs assessment complete with costs of Millennium Development Goals. The economy is growing at five per cent. That is the State working. But we have failed to contain corruption because we have no party. At the level of State, I am the boss of the civil servants. At the party, my being a minister would not matter.
Q: There is talk that Treasury may print money to finance the referendum campaigns. Is that a real possibility?
A: It is real. They want to print Sh500 million to finance the Banana campaign. The argument they are using is that the economy is strong enough to absorb that excess money. It will take us back to the era of high interest rates and inflation. But they say it will not.
See Also:
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