Tuju’s Rant Is a bad dent on Government

Mr Raphael Tuju is a man with to sides, quite literally. He is two things but he is not half one and half the other. Nay. He is one thing, wholly, and then  the other, wholly as well. He is cabinet Secretary in the Jubilee government with no portfolio. But, he is also the Jubilee party Secretary General. This means that he represents the party interests in the government and he represents government interests in the party. Seemingly a tough balancing act I must say. But it may not necessarily be as tough as it may look. He is serving the purpose for his appointment.

Let me break it down. President Uhuru Kenyatta has from the onset seemed very uncomfortable with the rules laid down by the constitution of Kenya 2010 with regard to many things including conduct and establishment of government, independence of institutions, separation of powers and nearly everything else. How else do you explain his attempt at effecting around seventy five (75) amendments in that sacred document through illegal means? It has been his norm to use unorthodox means to beat the requirements of the law or forego his constitutional obligations. This qualifies as a discussion for another day, though.

The president has never been comfortable with the requirement of the supreme law that Cabinet Secretary positions must not be held by serving members of parliament. He has always wanted politicians doubling as members of the executive and parliament to allow himself a little more latitude in his quest to control parliament. But since that was not possible under the law, he launched a three pronged attack on that principle.

First, he created an utterly meaningless and obviously illegal position of the Chief Administrative Secretary (CAS) and into it appointed many politicians and retained the position despite declarations by the courts that it is unconstitutional. Secondly, he proposed amendments to the constitution to allow parliamentarians to be selected as CSs. Thirdly, and this I consider big, the  cunningly appointed a politician into the cabinet in the person of Mr. Raphael Tuju and assigned him no role. This way, Uhuru achieved two things; an implicit but direct and powerful link to parliament via the party organs and explicit control over Jubilee members of parliament via the power wielded by the Secretary general of the party. And, boy, hasn’t he succeeded big time?

Now, Raphael Tuju as two things, plays two roles. Whenever he speaks from any government office as CS, he speaks for Jubilee party in government. When He speaks from Jubilee house as party Secretary general, Tuju speaks for the Executive in Jubilee. Period.

Thus, the CS without portfolio’s attack on the DP from the party headquarters was actually government attacking its own deputy president. What he said and how he conducted himself can therefore be accordingly construed as Cabinet position on and attitude towards the Deputy president. At this point, the fight within Jubilee is dangerously bare knuckled. We need to be careful and for a president who speaks unity of the nation every few sentences of his speeches, he’s rendered shamefully hypocritical by his own cabinet appointee. After Dr. Matiang’i recently gave an absolutely irrelevant explanation of why security of the DP was changed by providing a list of the properties owned by the deputy and Tuju confirming the real intention behind it by asking the DP to explain the quick wealth increase, the president’s hand in the woes of his deputy can be seen all over and this makes nonsense of his unity call.

It’s time for the president to rise up above the politics of the day. I am sure the man Uhuru Kenyatta is a good man with good intentions. Even his discomfort with the law is possibly the making of guys who refuse to accept that they can no longer use parliament to get things done by simply engineering some artificial blackmail via demand for ministerial statements. I suspect that people who have issues with the DP are working round the clock to keep the misunderstanding between him and his deputy as it is. Unfortunately, this looks destined to leave the country more divided and with deeper political wounds that ever. What the men close to the president are doing and the advice they’re giving him is antithetical to what would have been his biggest legacy. A united Kenya.