Ruto choices fell short of regional, gender balance
What you need to know:
- Ruto's administration falls flat on the PS appointments with women getting only 12 of the 51 posts.
- Besides, nominees from the Rift Valley and central Kenya dominate the PSs list with 13 slots each, translating to slightly more than half of all the posts.
- Therefore, President Ruto will have to live with the consequences of the failure to enhance inclusivity in top government jobs.
The Ruto administration could just have squandered vital public goodwill by failing to live up to expectations in appointments to the Executive.
The choices of Cabinet secretaries (CS) and principal secretaries (PS) have sparked controversy, with complaints that they have fallen short of, especially, regional balance and gender parity.
The CSs have already taken office but there is some disenchantment.
President William Ruto was, apparently, so keen on rewarding his loyal political supporters that he failed to come up with a balanced team. Among the CSs, women are only 31 per cent.
The disparity is worse among the PS nominees, with a paltry 23 per cent of them being women.
With only seven women CSs out of 22, the Ruto administration has missed the constitutional two-thirds gender rule, which also eluded the previous government.
It also falls flat on the PS appointments on the same score with women getting only 12 of the 51 posts. That simply means there is still a lot of work to do to comply with the constitutional provision.
Besides, nominees from the Rift Valley and central Kenya dominate the PSs list with 13 slots each, translating to slightly more than half of all the posts.
The two regions gave the President nearly two-thirds of the vote in the August 9 election.
Critics have faulted the nominations as not being inclusive enough and, coming hot on the heels of an outcry over the CS appointments, the choice of PSs had accorded Dr Ruto a golden opportunity to redress the situation. But he spurned it.
Contrary to the Kenya Kwanza Alliance election campaign pledges and pronouncements by its top leadership, the CS appointments are wanting on those two key benchmarks.
And judging from the vetting of the ministers, all the PS nominees will definitely sail through in Parliament.
Therefore, President Ruto will have to live with the consequences of the failure to enhance inclusivity in top government jobs.
President Ruto, however, deserves praise for picking some technocrats and promising youthful PSs and retaining a few old hands for continuity owing to their valuable experience.
