IS IT AN ACT OF CONFUSION OR JUST AN ACT OF EXCITEMENT FOR TASTING POWER?

 The cabinet meeting that took place between President Ruto, his Deputy President and the cabinet secretaries was necessary and took place at the right time. Yes!!! It was necessary because , we cannot have a goverment that is behaving like an adolescent struggling with identity crisis. By this I mean , a goverment which is making serious policy directives in a haphazard manner. The roadside declarations a section of the cabinet secretaries have been making off late depicts of leaders who are still fixated in campaign mood and haven't let go and realize they are in the government and should behave as so. Running a goverment isn't akin to running a campaign secretariat or a church choir , it takes more than that. Serious deliberations on all issues pertaining public policy should be handled with slot of care and professionalism. Communication should be at its best but not giving misinformation, disinformation and propaganda like communiques. That's not how a serious goverment operates. Even the parish States are somehow organised in their day to day activities.

Last week , three Ruto's cabinet secretaries made policy pronouncements that showed that , in deed , there is zero chain of command in Kenya Kwanza Alliance goverment. We started with CS trade Hon Moses Kuria on his threat to ban mitumba clothes but didn't fully elaborate , how the local textile industry will fill that gap. Then came CS Public Service and gender Hon Aisha Jumwa on his directive that Huduma centres across Kenya will be operating from 7am to 7 pm. How she arrived to such a pronouncement remains a mystery. Fine , did she first acquainted herself with the labour laws and the public service charter? Ok , if you increase their time of work , will you increase their salaries and other allowances? We all know , all public servants are supposed to report to work at 8 am and leave at 5 pm. The questions many Kenyans asked is , why single out Huduma centres employees only and spare the rest of the public servants?

Even before the dust had settled ,the CS Education Ho. Ezekiel Machogu threw caution in the wind by telling Kenyans that , the Kenya Kwanza goverment will stop funding institutions of higher learning which are the Universities and rather , they should look for ways of generating their own revenues. Also , the government won't subsidize the University students who are admitted by Kenya University and Colleges central placement service ( KUCCPS). This was a stab in the ordinary Wanjiku heart. It meant that , the mama mboga , jamaa wa mkokoteni , jamaa wa boda boda who is havin a daughter or son in a public university will either terminate their studies or dig extremely very deep in her/his pockets. There could be no other way. For those who aren't starters in all this meleee , we all know it is part of the punitive the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is putting forward to this goverment in the form of structural adjustment programmes (SAPs). It is a policy pronouncement by CS Machogu that generated more heat than light in many households in Kenya. The social media was ablaze with criticism and condemnation of the existing goverment something that made the CS to retract his earlier statement. 

The question the 50 million Kenyans are asking themselves is , is this Government operating using try and error? For how long will they be putting across very serious policy decisions casually to the public in the aim of testing waters by testing the reactions of its citizenry? This alone is putting this goverment in bad light and in a collision path with the very Kenyans who voted for it. Those who didn't vote or voted for it thrown the towel long time ago. This shows the confusion in the government. The moment the cabinet secretaries starts throwing serious policy directives in a haphazard manner , that alone shows the leadership is slowly derailing and that , this are people who weren't serious on what they will do once they clinch power and form the government. Clarity of thought is very important especially someone is holding coveted State offices. You don't just come out with excitement and hold a press briefing and give a serious issues by fiat. This alone is very disheartening. This are issues that need to be addressed in a cabinet meeting and either becomes ratified or thrown out. Since the new CSs were sworn in , they have never held a meeting. No wonder , the excitement of a bride and bridegroom was taking the better of them and resulted to utterances that placed this Government in bad light.

Cabinet Secretary for Roads and transportation Hon Kipchumba Murkomen a fortnight ago promised to make the SGR contract and agreement between Kenya and China public. The threats he was issuing and his tone when referring to this matter , every Kenyan was expecting , he will be dropping a dossier which would have caused a very serious earthquake with a magnitude of about 9.0 on the ritcher scale. The moment he released it , it turned out to be a wild goose chase. He was just taking Kenyans into a very tedious fishing expedition. It had nothing unusual and this alone left a egg on his face. They say , you cannot organize a fight and lose. It is calamitous. That's exactly what happened. Was it a ploy to distract Kenyans by diverting their attention from the many crisis the regime is facing? I think so but , when you saw Beijing didn't react to that SGR agreement , just know it was just a decoy. This regime cannot put the non disclosure annexures of that agreement to the public because it knows what can happen between it and Beijing.

In the short and long-terms , the new administration should formulate a nerve centre of communication so that , they organize themselves on how , cabinet secretaries will be communicating to the public the policies formulated by their respective ministries. We can be having a litany of contradictory information coming from various ministries as if we have 22 Goverments in Kenya instead of one. If there is something that the new regime is grappling with is , communication. Dessimination of information on policy directives should happen in an organised manner just like it was happening with the previous regime. We cannot be getting this information A from a certain ministry. It confuses us. In the evening, we get it from ministry B and as usual , it leaves Kenyans confusing and fuming with rage. That's now how the government which wants to convince Kenyans that it is organized and ready to work for them should conduct itself. No!!! A climate of soberness must be created by it inorder to instill confidence and trust from its citizens.