{UAH} Behind the young, fresh Cabinet are stern old faces of central government - Opinion - nation.co.ke

http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/-/440808/1938166/-/j0vo0cz/-/index.html

Members of the two Houses of Parliament are engaged in a pissing contest over which of the Chambers is superior.

Elsewhere, the governors who run the 47 counties are forever camping at President Kenyatta's State House or Deputy President William Ruto's swanking new but unsatisfactory palace, trying to negotiate proper roles and functions for their rump administrations.

That is when they are not busy canvassing for personal perks and privileges, stoking up territorial disputes with each other and generally making village tyrants of themselves.

Welcome to the brave new world of devolution. What we are seeing so far is never the way it was supposed to be. The Senate and the National Assembly were supposed to have clearly defined roles, so the issue of which greedy little boy can pee furthest should never have arisen.

We were supposed to have a clear timetable for devolution, together with clear lines between the functions and responsibilities for county governments vis-à-vis the national government.

If the mechanisms towards attainment of devolution — notably Mr Micah Cheserem's Commission on Revenue Allocation and Mr Kinuthia Wamwangi's Transition Authority — were working properly, there would be no need for governors to be forever seeking intercession of the President and Deputy President.

Neither would it be necessary for the county leaders to be perpetually locking heads with National Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich and Devolution colleague Anne Waiguru.

It would seem to me that either the processes and mechanisms were not properly worked out, or maybe somebody somewhere is deliberately trying to sabotage devolution.

It is suspicious that while all minds have been diverted by unending quarrels over finances, transfer of functions and the motorcades of governors, that old monstrosity called the Office of the President has stealthily moved to claw back all the centralised powers it was about to lose. Provincial commissioners and the entire edifice of the provincial administration down to chiefs and sub-chiefs are back, if under new titles.

In the Jubilee year, the eyes and ears of the central government still wear the colonial-era pith helmets to confirm that they were designed and employed as part of the colonial force of occupation that was happily inherited by the Independent state.

Nobody has had time to really object to the retention of central government agents at the county level because we have no opposition worth talking about.

Cord coalition leaders Raila Odinga and Kalonzo Musyoka have allowed themselves to be diverted by sterile arguments over the number of cars and bodyguards they are entitled to.

Their troops in Parliament, the likes of Jakoyo Midiwo, Johnstone Muthama, James Orengo and my old ADD colleague Francis Nyenze, are too busy heckling from the outside or joining their Jubilee Government counterparts in agitating for the legalised theft that is the Legislative gravy town.

Without opposition, the government thus can do pretty much what it wants. And we are in a situation where if anybody questioned the wisdom of retaining DCs and other central government mandarins, a strong riposte would come in the need for law and order in the counties.

That is why I wonder whether some of the bizarre things we are seeing between some county governments are not stage-managed to provide the rationale for "neutral" officers and security and administrative systems.

We have seen just in recent days Kajiado County making territorial claims on Machakos County. The Kitui and Tana River county governments are engaging in their own silly little spat that if not checked in time could escalate into actual hostilities.

We can thank God that the tinpot governors don't have their own armed forces under their command. Or at least we can thank the central government for maintaining a strong presence to ensure security across the countries?

I just wonder if that is incidental or by design. I think the latter. That is because when I look at all the eager, fresh, young faces in the Jubilee Cabinet, I see change, hope, and renewal; but when I look behind the wall-flowers, I see the stern old faces of the traditional public service mandarins who have a mindset going back to the colonial era. The command and control government has never gone away.