Politics now home for incompetents

Driving to our offices after attending a morning breakfast meeting officiated by a Cabinet minister, a professional colleague who teaches at a local university wondered why the CS could barely articulate herself around issues in her ministry.

The minister, whom President William Ruto – in his wisdom or mostly lack of it – had entrusted with a sensitive docket, was intimately married to talking points prepared by ministry bureaucrats. Restless professionals in the room had a field day making faces at the CS’s iota of depth on issues in her docket. Yet she was in charge of policy leadership in a docket that requires better learning and sophistication in an increasingly complex industry landscape.

The professor answered himself, saying that executive leadership in Kenya was never about merit. It boils down to blind sycophancy, deal-making and an unfortunate situation where intellectuals are forced to deploy their skills in defence of deceit, incompetence, ineptitude, betrayal and avarice among their leadership.

We have been here long enough to say that this Bible-carrying and “God-ordained” government lies through the teeth and with disdain for people who elected it. And its civil servants have been trained to lie to Kenyans using cooked data on housing, employment, inflation, taxation, food prices and even health. Never in the history of this country has a government machinery been activated as an enterprise for deceit and hubris. But this should be understandable from a cabal that lied itself to power with good cheer from the gullible poor.

We had spent a whole morning taking high tea listening to a clearly incompetent minister whose only merit for the job was probably paranoid tribal arithmetic and connections to the appointing authority.

To say that government offices are weighed down with heavily suited, incompetent and overzealous know-it-all testosterone chasing after dubious allowances is an understatement.

A few months earlier, I had a terrifying encounter with hubris in government circles. We had been summoned by a PS irked about our line of reporting on the presidency. Our sin? We had reported that President Ruto’s relationship with the truth was scanty – and with grave consequences.

The PS, a man trained in a totally different field, then attempted to take us down a peg or two. He got infuriated that we had the audacity to tell him that he was not an expert in my trade and was, therefore, irredeemably unqualified to lecture me on journalism – an attitude among government officials that often unsettles me. I sat there wondering how such “educated” mediocrity found itself in government. He has sued me for saying that the President has no relationship with the truth.

Thankfully, Catholic bishops came out months later to say the same thing.

They said that the President has “entrenched a culture of lies [in government] swiftly replacing the integrity and respect that Kenyans deserve.”

“Basically, it seems that truth does not exist, and if it does, it’s only what the government says. Kenyans have helplessly tolerated lies told to them constantly by the politicians. Kenyans must learn not to applaud or validate the lies that politicians tell them, but rather, must resolve to seek and to be led by the truth,” they said.

They have agreed to stand witnesses in our case against the bully.

But the reprimand from Catholic bishops does not overshadow the silence of the church as the Ruto state took the lives of innocent brave young Kenyans who were demanding good governance from a clearly insolent and impervious administration during the Gen Z protests.

In a subtle response, Ruto called on all leaders, clergy, and Kenyans to stick to the facts when engaging in public discourse, warning that “people can become victims of the things they accuse others of doing”.

This begs several questions. What is the place of merit in government appointments. What informs the choice of individuals as Cabinet ministers? Why is the government littered with political rejects?

The Gen Z standing next to you will tell you that merit, legacy and integrity hardly inform political choices in Kenya. Nepotism, blind tribal faith, financial incentives and raw ignorance remain the key drivers on government appointments and elective leadership.

Former Cabinet minister Mukhisa Kituyi has argued that politics is “a bastard which does not respect rationality all the time”.
The most talented people never get elected, because they are an insignificant minority. People vote for individuals who are like themselves in large numbers.

Kenyan voters take collective leave of their senses in the last mile and start complaining after elections.

Clever people offer themselves for elections but druglords splash money and all common sense is sent on sabbatical – then they warm their way into Cabinet.

—The writer is People Daily’s Managing Editor