Play the game and play it well or withdraw from the field.

Political debts are very difficult to settle. Regardless of the consideration paid, there is always a whiff of the controversial around who gets what and when and the the expense of whom. The President made some appointments over the New Year to state corporations' boards. Some were received without further thought; some have generated controversy. The appointments of Ambassador Francis Muthaura and Mohammed Abduba Dida to the boards of the LAPSSET and the CDF have received especial attention.

The appointments have become controversial because of the opposition and support for the appointments. What no one has said, explicitly or implicitly, is that the President was out of bounds for making the appointments for political reasons. Those against the appointments may sound the most sincere about their opposition, but they are doing the same thing that the President is doing, only in reverse: they are playing politics with the appointments, intent on demonstrating to their constituencies that they are on top of things.

Regardless of the odious whiff of opportunism about the appointments, this blogger is acutely aware that there is no democratic system that does not run on the political settlements that must be made every now and then. It is how the world turns. Sooner or later, it is the political grease that will come to play when there are sensitive and controversial decisions to be made.

The President is implicitly acknowledging that the days of an imperial presidency are dead and gone. If he wants his legislative and administrative agenda to be implemented, he will need allies in Parliament, in the state corporations' sector and, especially, in the private sector. When it comes to sell his agenda, the President understands that for the long term legitimacy of his government, he cannot make decisions by presidential fiat, but through an integrated approach to selling the agenda to the wider public. The President has done what other heads of government do in democratic societies; he is managing the affairs of state by co-opting as many political and administrative allies as he can. In other words, he is playing the game like it should be played.

Those who are challenging his appointments are well within their rights to challenge the appointments. They too are playing the game. Who comes out on top will only be known when the game is done. However, many of them are stuck in the dark days of the KANU era, seeing ethnic ghosts where none exist. It is in their short-sighted interests to argue that "their" people or "their" regions have been sidelined; it is not in their interests to accept that the experienced administrators and the political threats co-opted into the Jubilee government are a necessary evil all democracies must contend with.

Rather than whinge piteously about who or where was left out, they should strategise to keep the appointees on their toes. Some of the appointees are bound to make mistakes; it is the duty of the Minority Party to play an aggressive oversight role over the appointees to ensure that the President pays for their mistakes if and when they make them. Anything less and the Minority Party will constantly be wrongfooted in their attempts to politically kneecap the President. Mr Kenyatta is the consummate strategist and the Minority Party must up its game to keep up with him.