Kenyans are reportedly disappointed after President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister-designate Raila Odinga failed to name a working cabinet Sunday as promised. Some Kenyans expressed their displeasure despite reports that some progress had been made by the two leaders on a compromise in constituting the cabinet.
Formation of a cabinet is part of a power sharing deal brokered by former United National Secretary general Kofi Annan, which ended Kenya’s post- election violence last year. Some political analysts have attributed the failure to form a cabinet to power struggle between the government and the opposition.
Professor Kabiru Kinyanjui is a Kenyan political analyst. From the capital, Nairobi he tells reporter Peter Clottey that there is a need for both parties to get their acts together.
“First, the mood in the country is disappointment. The country people are feeling that the two leaders are not providing statesmanship, which is required at this time to enable the country to move forward and start the process of healing, reconciliation and reconstruction. So, people are really disappointed, they were expecting some announcement today so that the country could move forward. So the country is very disappointed,” Kinyanjui pointed out.
He attributed the failure of the two leaders to name a cabinet to uncompromising tendencies.
“I think the major thing is power struggle, which is going on between ODM (Orange Democratic Movement) and the people within the PNU (Party of National Unity) and the government. It is pure power struggle going and each side is trying to remain in a strategic power position, as they enter into the government. So, that is what we are seeing, the struggle between the two forces ODM and those forces behind the government at the moment. They are the ones who are pushing the two leaders, Raila Odinga and also President Mwai Kibaki. And that they are almost held hostage by those power struggles, which are going on,” he said.
Kinyanjui reiterated the frustration he said Kenyans are feeling about the inability of the country’s leadership to come up with a functioning cabinet.
“Kenyans are asking the same questions. If they cannot be able to name a government at this juncture, what about working together to move the country forward, to be able to reconstruct, to be able to be thinking in terms of the investment in the infrastructure, and sharing of other resources, which needs to be shared so that the country can go forward? In actual fact, people are asking the question, can conditions, which are being set at the moment work if the two leaders cannot work in terms of naming the government?” Kinyanjui noted.
