Disbanded Transition Authority boss recalls more downs than ups

As Mr Kinuthia Wamwangi carted away documents from his office on Friday evening, last week, his last day as chairman of the Transition Authority, one thing he wished he had was more goodwill from the Devolution ministry.

Under former Cabinet Secretary Anne Waiguru, he said, the authority’s space was stifled “by the fact that someone did not like it”.

Alleging that Ms Waiguru was behind a Bill the Attorney-General presented to Parliament proposing the disbandment of the Transition Authority (TA) in 2013, Mr Wamwangi said the team was a target from the early days of the Jubilee regime, only that the National Assembly protected them.

“I think that disturbance helped us to come out more openly and tell the people what we do. It also made us work very, very, very hard,” recalled Mr Wamwangi.

In his opinion, Ms Waiguru’s successor at the Devolution ministry, Mr Mwangi Kiunjuri, could have helped TA achieve more.

“I told him in a (recent) stakeholders’ meeting that since he came, TA experienced fresh air. And real oxygen. We also saw him as a beacon of hope, even for devolution,” he told the Sunday Nation in his office.

LOW BUDGET

One of the major hurdles that TA faced, he said, was a low budget. He said their allocations were stifled after the financial autonomy of the team was overlooked.

“We should have had our own (budget) ceiling in Parliament, but now we were deriving our ceiling from another ceiling,” he said.

“We lost our financial independence. Our vote was absorbed into the ministry of Local Government.

Parliament, according to some sections of the law, was supposed to allocate us funds directly.

After we lost our vote, we depended on the discretion of the ministry of Devolution. And, in itself, it also had a limited ceiling. So we lived within the ceiling of another agency.”

The TA, headed by a team of 17, was charged with coordinating the transition to the devolved system of government.

As per the Transition to Devolved Government Act, its term was to run for three years after the General Election of March 4, 2013.

“We have done our best. Not done everything; we have done our best,” Mr Wamwangi said.

He added: “If you go to Makueni County, then to Busia, you will have the same feeling and the same setting of county government.

If you go to Mandera, the same. But can you imagine if there was no Transition Authority and everybody established their own governments according to the way they understand it to be?

Now we have uniform norms and standards of running county governments.”

Before senators on February 25 ordered TA to pack its bags on the day its term expired, the authority had been seeking an extension by three years, saying there was more work to be done.

PENDING WORK

Mr Wamwangi said there was still work pending - especially on defining the assets owned by county and national governments - but he was optimistic that the successive agencies would execute the tasks to completion.

“Those who have taken over from us, the Intergovernmental Relations Committee, I pray that they get the necessary government support to be able to carry out this work.

Because it’s humongous. It requires critical support of the national government. If they get support, they’ll do it,” he said.

He noted that out of the more than four stages involved in the transfer of resources from former local authorities and the national government to counties, only one had been done.

“There are about eight phases and we have only done one phase, that is the inventory. There are three inventories we needed to do and we’ve only done one,” he said.

After leaving office, the former town clerk who is a father of four plans to execute community projects and has vowed to keep off elective politics.

“I would like to consider areas that have to do with peace initiatives and cultural development because I’ve already been recognised as a community elder.

These are things that are better done through eldership. I would like to promote things that help the community move forward, both culturally and in terms of integration,” said Mr Wamwangi.