POLITICS-KENYA: Cabinet Sacked, Parliament Postponed

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Joyce Mulama

NAIROBI, Nov 24 2005 (IPS) - Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki has sacked his entire cabinet and postponed the re-opening of parliament, this after Monday’s referendum in which voters rejected a proposed constitution even though Kibaki had lobbied heavily for its approval.

“Following the results of the referendum, it has become necessary for me as the president of the republic to re-organise my government to make it more cohesive and better able to serve the people of Kenya,” the president said in a terse televised address, Wednesday.

This is the first time in 42 years of independence that an entire cabinet has been axed in Kenya. The mass dismissal came in the midst of increasingly stormy relations between cabinet members, who form part of the ruling National Rainbow Coalition (NARC).

Seven ministers from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) vehemently opposed the new constitution, even joining forces with the opposition Kenya African National Union (KANU) to fight for it to be defeated in the referendum.

Critics of the constitution said it gave too much authority to the president, in defiance of a survey conducted by the Constitution of Kenya Review Commission which found that Kenyans wanted a reduction of presidential powers. This apparently stemmed from the desire to avoid abuses of presidential authority as had occurred under former heads of state Daniel arap Moi and Jomo Kenyatta.

A previous draft of the constitution had proposed that executive authority be shared between the president and the newly-created post of prime minister. However, legislators from the National Alliance Party (headed by Kibaki) succeeded in altering this draft to maintain strong presidential powers. Their version of the constitution allowed for a non-executive prime minister who would be appointed by the head of state.

Putting a less powerful prime minister in place would have gone against the spirit of a reported agreement between Kibaki and LDP leader Raila Odinga that the latter was to be given the post of prime minister, in exchange for supporting NARC during the 2002 poll that bought it to power.

Those who endorsed the proposed constitution insisted that it did contain enough safeguards to keep the president in check.

With the constitutional referendum having come to be seen as a vote on the NARC government’s performance, some viewed Kibaki’s cabinet dismissal as an appropriate step.

“The results of the referendum were about the people’s confidence in President Kibaki’s government,” political commentator Mutahi Ngunyi told IPS.

“He is suffering a crisis of legitimacy. He could easily have reshuffled the cabinet, but decided to dissolve it and bring in a new team that will help restore the confidence of the people.”

Despite pledging to fight corruption, government has itself been accused of graft. This prompted former British High Commissioner to Kenya Edward Clay to describe certain officials of being guilty of a greed that caused them “to vomit all over our shoes”. He made the comment during a speech last year.

For his part, constitutional lobbyist Cyprian Nyamwamu sees the sacking as a way of distracting public attention from further constitutional review. “The president is acting deliberately to sway this from the road,” he told IPS.

Nyamwamu is an official in the Yellow Movement, an umbrella group for civil society organisations involved in constitutional reform initiatives. The movement announced Wednesday that these organisations would begin discussions about a new constitution next week.

Just under 60 percent of citizens who took part in the referendum voted against the proposed constitution. Pending further reviews, Kenya will continue to be governed by the constitution that has been in use since the country gained independence from Britain in 1963.

Kibaki has promised that a new team will be in place within the next fortnight to replace his former 28-member cabinet. Parliament – initially supposed to have resumed work on Nov. 29 – will now re-open in March next year (legislators had been on a break ahead of the constitutional referendum).

However, the opposition has called for parliament to be dissolved – and early elections held. “More than even the cabinet, it is parliament which was the central player in the betrayal of the people’s constitution,” said KANU secretary general William Ruto.