Why Ruto's key allies keep their seats despite blunders

Being a member of President William Ruto’s Cabinet is akin to a game of musical chairs; only that some seats are reserved for specific players who never drop out.

Kipchumba Murkomen, Aden Duale and Davis Chirchir are the players who only change their positions in the same field. No matter how incompetent, nonchalant or rogue they may become, it is only the chair they use that changes. They still win the game even when losing.

Murkomen joined the Cabinet as Roads and Transport Cabinet Secretary when President Ruto first formed his Cabinet in 2022. Chirchir was in charge of the Energy and Petroleum docket while Duale was Defence CS.

Since the October 2022 appointments, Murkomen has been moved from Roads and Transport to Youth Affairs, Creative Economy and Sports, to his current position as the Interior CS.

Chirchir now heads the Roads and Transport docket while Duale was moved to Environment, then Health.

While their former colleagues were axed once the dead bodies in their dockets started to float, the trio remain, even when Kenyans lament their incompetence.

Kipchumba Murkomen

Murkomen’s move to the Youth Affairs, Creative Economy and Sports docket from Roads and Transport was climaxed by the flopped Adani deal involving the privatisation of Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.

“I have not, and I do not have the capacity to enter into any Public Private Partnership (PPP) as a person, as a Cabinet Secretary, and I have not, in any way, sold the airport,” he told a Parliamentary Committee chaired by National Assembly Speaker Moses Wetang’ula that was vetting him for the Youth Affairs, Creative Economy and Sports CS position.

While Adani was the climax, the visibility of his light dimming started when power went out at JKIA and the roof also gave in and started leaking.

Additionally, Kenya Airways (KQ) pilots had just returned to the air after grounding the planes while demanding better pay packages.

This strike happened just a month after Murkomen took office, and his political instinct kicked in, using the strongest words he could find to threaten pilots to resume work.

When the JKIA roof was leaking, Murkomen used the same tactics, dismissing it as a small issue and calling the reporting hyperbolic.

“That hysteria that people have with small problems should be directed to good energy to report the good things happening at the airport,” he told the media. “If you saw what I have seen today, a complete new roof is being constructed, something that has never been done before.”

Davis Chirchir

The JKIA problems also roped in Chirchir, who was forced to explain the countrywide blackout that became sporadic from 2023, spilling into 2024, affecting operations at the airport whose standby generator failed to kick in on time.

“The gist of it is lack of investment in the network for a long time,” he said in December 2023.

He gave an example of the Kisumu-Muhoroni transmission line which once tripped, triggering a countrywide blackout when it was overloaded by 149 MW instead of the intended 80 MW.

“We have continued to connect customers on the last mile, we have continued to build industries, and we have not built (transmission) network in the last five, six or seven years. There is so much constraint in the transmission,” he said.

In September 2023, Chirchir could not explain clearly what led to the blackout that happened in August that year, even as Kenya Power and Lake Turkana Wind Power (LTWP) traded accusations over the source of the blackout.

Kenya Power had explained that it was caused by the loss of 270 MW generation at LTWP, which triggered an imbalance that later tripped all other main generation units, leading to an outage.

LTWP, however, argued that it was forced to go offline and stop generation following an overvoltage in the national grid as a safety precaution to avoid damage.

“This is why we did say give us some days to conclusively confirm: was the signal from this plant reporting to that plant that switched off because we are in danger, or did it automatically switch off because it was an internal fault,” he told the National Assembly Energy Committee that was probing the issue.

Chirchir’s dense has also been transposed to the Roads and Transport docket that he now leads. His silence when dozens of people were being killed in road crashes in recent weeks has been loud.

He issued a statement later, speaking of investigations and regulations, which his predecessor Murkomen was also working on, to address the situation.

“As I had previously announced, efforts to strengthen road safety legislation in regulations of school transport, operations of commercial vehicles, drink-driving, inspection of motor vehicles, roadside stations and review of the Traffic Act are at advanced stages,” he said in a statement.

Aden Duale

Duale’s time at his first posting as Defence CS had news leaking out to the press that the men in uniform found him egotistic, not suitable to run that area of national service, and that it was only a matter of time before it would be difficult for him to dish out civilian commands to a disciplined sector whose demeanour was opposite to the indiscipline in the country’s politics.

The deployment of the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) to handle the Gen Z protests in 2024 seemed to be followed by his insolent nature that has decorated his political career.

“Some people purport that they can dare march to State House… those of us who have been bestowed with the duty of taking care of the national security organs of our country, we will not allow,” he said during a fundraising function in Tana River County.

He later argued during his vetting to take up the Environment docket that he did not deploy KDF.

“I did not deploy KDF,” he said, arguing that KDF had been previously deployed in Boni Forest and other areas as well. “For peace, public order and public safety, where the police are overwhelmed, Article 241 3(b) of the Constitution kicks in. The function of CS Defence is that once the article kicks in, I do subsidiary legislation; I gazette.”

His service at the Environment docket was riddled with reports of logging at Karura Forest, with fears of illegal activity and land grabbing from the public. However, the Kenya Forest Service (KFS) and the Friends of Karura Forest (FOK) said the logging that was carried out was a legal, planned effort to remove mature, invasive exotic trees like cypress and eucalyptus and replace them with indigenous species to restore the forest’s natural ecosystem.

Duale dismissed claims of land grabbing while on a tour of the forest, saying “the removal of some exotic trees was part of a long-term forest conversion plan which involves replacing exotic trees with indigenous species.”

It is in his current position at the Health docket that his bullfrog confidence has ballooned – talking tough against his critics, dismissing journalists seeking the truth – while patients are dying in hospitals because of a state-led health system that is not functioning for either hospitals or patients.

The payment of claims to hospitals by the Social Health Authority has been faced with complaints from stakeholders in health services, as news broke that an unknown Level 3 hospital in North Eastern had been paid upwards of Sh220 million in claims in under 8 months.

When The Standard exposed the rot, he retaliated by calling The Standard newspaper “gutter press”. He went on to say the country’s healthcare delivery is undergoing a major transformation under Taifa Care to make services accessible and affordable.

In another incident, Duale publicly berated a journalist who questioned if the overseas SHA package was working, since some patients were stranded abroad. He told off the journalist, saying “the ministry has contracts with service providers and not media houses”, amid chuckles from other health officials.

“Some of the newspapers I am not going to advertise with. I would rather use vernacular radio. I can use my Twitter handle of the ministry,” said Duale in another excerpt.