The Presidential Staff

The Office of the President is set to be re-configured in light of the radical changes wrought by the Constitution. He will still have a senior civil servant to head his Cabinet office, the Secretary to the Cabinet. However, the President's personal staff will have to be reconfigured to ensure that the business of government reflects the political promises he may have made during the campaigns. 

In going for a purely presidential system of government, the President shall take primacy in the Executive, with nary a politician in his Cabinet. This is a risky move for a country used to seeing politicians pulling the strings from behind the scenes or taking the lead in controversial government policies. To accomplish both his administrative and political agenda, the President will need an independent staff, free from the constraints of the Cabinet or the requirements of the political party. In other words, he will need a staff that neither comes from the Cabinet or the Legislature, and one that answers directly to him.

The Secretary to the Cabinet answers directly to the President. His role is purely administrative - he will do what he is directed to do by the President and it is his responsibility to see that government policy is implemented as efficiently and effectively as possible. He is the administrative head of the civil service and the public services and he shall be responsible for ensuring that government departments meet their administrative targets. In other words, he makes sure that the trains run on time and holds state and public officers to account for their actions. He shall oversee the administrative operations of Cabinet Committees and Sub-committees and ensure that inter-ministry and inter-ministerial committees work effectively to address cross-cutting issues.

Many of the policies of the Executive will be political ones, reflecting the ideology and promises made by the President and Deputy-President while out on the campaign trail. The President should have a Chief of Staff, who shall put together a team to advise the President and to assist him to ensure that his political promises are converted into government policy and then implemented. This is the American model, in which the President's personal staff answer directly to him through the Chief of Staff. They ensure that the priorities of the President are addressed by the Cabinet. They serve at the pleasure of the President and as soon as his term is over, they also resign. Depending on the style of the President, his personal staff may be wholly political, wholly technical-professional or a mixture of both. The third option may serve the President best. He will need a staff that ensures that his personal and political relationships with key members of the National Assembly and Senate remain on a even keel.

He will also need a staff that understands the mechanics of government, capable of drafting policy documents, legislation and such other material and also able to navigate the byzantine rules of political activity while serving the President. If we had had a longer history of effective political parties, the President's staff would have come from the party. However, given the realities of today, it is likely that the Chief of Staff will be a long-serving member of the President's inner political circle while the rest of the staff may come from the private sector, lured by the promise of access to the President and the opportunity to serve the country in more concrete ways than from their sinecures in private industry. Many will be professionals in their own right, having risen to the tops of their professions. The job of the President's personal staff is to watch the political and policy landscapes, offer him advice and policy or legislative options to be presented to the Cabinet, and help him to ensure that these are implemented with the minimum of risk.

We have long had a Presidential style of administration in all but name and it has been an unmitigated disaster. The Comptroller of State House, ideally, should head the President's personal staff. However, history shows that Presidents Kenyatta and Moi took on a more personal approach to management and their Comptrollers were mere place-holders, dealing with the minor issues of managing the president's day-to-day calendar. President Kibaki has been hostage to the Muthaiga Golf Club cabal that surrounds him, ensuring that he has concentrated more on keeping his cronies happy than in effective governance. The impression created by Michaela Wrong's It's Our Turn to Eat is of a President who has the strength to do what he wants but frequently takes the expedient way out because of the advice he receives from his cronies.

In what is expected to be a Raila presidency, very little is known of what sort of staff he will put together. So far, he does not demonstrate that he has a credible team of political and administrative advisors capable explaining to him the political and administrative landscape that he wishes to control. Prof. Miguna Miguna, for all his intelligence, does not seem to be an effective Chief of Staff and his infrequent public pronouncements have the whiff of a fish out of water. If President Raila wants to run an effective presidential office, he must begin putting together a transitional team today that meets his political and administrative needs, capable of preparing policy and legislative documents that he can use to effectively run the country. They must be able to manage the relations between the Executive and the Legislative branches in such a manner that the President spends as little time as possible struggling to get the legislation he wants from Parliament. They must also be able to effectively manage the relations between the Executive and Parliamentary committees in such a manner that the civil service is better able to meet the administrative and political needs of the government.