- Questions about Ruto’s choice of Cabinet started right at the vetting phase in Parliament when Minority Leader John Mbadi urged MPs to reject some of the 23 nominees.
- During a media roundtable on June 30, the President admitted that his Cabinet had fallen below expectations.
Image: PCS
June 30, 2024. That's the date President William Ruto seemingly sealed the fate of his Cabinet.
The President had hosted a media roundtable at State House that night at the height of growing criticism of his government and public anger following the passage of the Finance Bill, 2024.
He had withdrawn the Bill days earlier but this appeared not to have appeased demonstrators who were still spoiling for a series of more mass demonstrations.
Nation Media Group's Editor-in-Chief Joe Ageyo put the President to task wanting to know whether his Cabinet had delivered to his expectations.
“Maybe my Cabinet could have done better,” he said in response.
Ageyo pressed him further on whether the President would continue sticking with a Cabinet whose performance rating he had acknowledged was below par.
“Given the things that have happened, given the questions...tonight, can you look at Kenyans in the eye and tell them you have full confidence in the Cabinet that is currently helping you to run the country?” Ageyo asked.
“Maybe my Cabinet could have done better and so I’m going to do the soul-searching on how we need to move forward,” the President said in response.
Questions about Ruto’s choice of Cabinet started right from the vetting phase in Parliament when Minority Leader John Mbadi urged the House to reject some of the 23 nominees.
“We have a choice to make either decision to reject over 60 per cent of these names or give President Ruto his Cabinet, he has asked for it,” Mbadi said during the CS nominee approval debate on October 26, 2022.
“Apart from few individuals who are not even more than eight…the rest are people who cannot deliver this country from where it is to the next level where we want the country to move,” he added.
During the signing of performance contracts by his Cabinet at State House on August 1, 2023, Ruto lent credence to Mbadi’s remarks when he acknowledged that some of his Cabinet members were clueless about what they were doing.
“I call many PSs and ask them what is going on here and they have no clue and this is your department; that is the job that you have. You are not a messenger, you are not a security person, you are not a photographer, you are not a watchman,” he said.
Ruto said PSs and CSs are supposed to advise him, yet he seemed to understand more about what was happening in their dockets than they did.
“You are the PS or the minister and you don’t have information, how do you run a ministry, a department, or a parastatal if you have no information? That is the highest level of incompetence,” the President added.
The President advised the cabinet to make a habit of reading to keep pace with new information in their respective dockets.
“I take time myself to read….you can never make the right decisions if you do not have the correct information, it will all be a game of guesswork,” he said.
Fast forward to September 17, 2023, Prime Cabinet Secretary and Foreign and Diaspora CS Musalia Mudavadi hinted that a Cabinet reshuffle was looming.
Mudavadi, who was the only Cabinet member who survived the purge on Thursday, said it was within the President's right to make changes in government whenever he deemed it long overdue and wise.
"The President is clear about one thing, this administration is about efficiency and effectiveness in service delivery to the people," Mudavadi said.
"The moment any appointee steps out of line or acts in a manner that is inconsistent with this mantra, it is not beyond the President to make changes in senior ranks of the Executive. At an appropriate time and in his wisdom, the President could make such changes," he added.