Rifts plunge new Kenyan govt into early crisis

 Rifts plunge new Kenyan govt into early crisis
Thu Dec 8, 2005 2:42 PM ET

By Wangui Kanina and David Mageria

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki's bid to boost his flagging administration foundered on Thursday as two senior politicians rejected cabinet posts, saying he had ignored the lessons of a stinging referendum defeat.

Musikari Kombo and Orwa Ojodeh rejected the local government and environment jobs respectively. Charity Ngilu was undecided about taking up health, saying she needed to consult colleagues.

Seventeen politicians offered assistant minister jobs also refused, some of them within an hour of the new line-up being announced by Kibaki on television on Wednesday evening.

If more of Kibaki's chosen ministers refuse to serve in his team, they may have the numbers to call and win a no-confidence vote in parliament, forcing him to call a snap election.

The next elections in east Africa's biggest economy, where presidential and parliamentary polls are held simultaneously, are not due until 2007.

The shilling slipped in reaction to the political disarray, to 73.60 to the dollar, down from 73.30 on Wednesday.

"President Kibaki is quickly losing the moral authority to govern Kenya," Kenya Human Rights Commission chairman Makau Mutua told Reuters.

"It is inconceivable that a president could be humiliated in this fundamental way by his appointees, and retain the moral authority to govern a country."

Kibaki, 74, took office in late 2002 with a coalition government which united most of the major political and tribal alignments to end 39 years of rule by the Kenya African National Union (KANU) party of former President Daniel arap Moi.

But he sacked his previous cabinet on November 23 to regain the political initiative after a referendum rejected a new constitution which entrenched the powers of the president.

His new cabinet surprised many by omitting a group of former cabinet dissidents, in effect marking the death of the coalition that brought Kibaki to power.

"There is no coalition. There is no government of national unity. I can say that the cabinet that has been appointed is of recycled individuals from the archives," Najib Balala, the former minister for National Heritage, told Reuters.

MINORITY GOVERNMENT

Nobel Peace laureate Wangari Maathai appealed to Kibaki to postpone the cabinet's swearing in, set for Friday, to allow time for the new team to settle its internal differences.

"If you listen to all the ministers who declined to take their posts, the reason they are giving is the president failed to consult with their parties before making his appointment. It's very important for leaders to be consulted," she said.

Analysts said Kibaki's refusal to reappoint the dissidents to the cabinet was a punishment for their instrumental role in ensuring his humiliating defeat in the referendum.

But far from sidelining the rebels, Kibaki's exclusion of them is likely to spur more opposition to his rule, experts say.

"For the first time in our history, Kenya has a minority government and a minority president. In no democratic country have the losers been rewarded and the winners completely sidelined," said David Musila, chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party, a coalition partner in the previous cabinet.

Ojodeh declined the job of environment minister, saying Kibaki had favored his Kikuyu tribe at the expense of others.

Kombo, a former local government minister who backed Kibaki in the referendum, said his FORD-Kenya party felt short-changed and would take no positions in the cabinet as a result.

Ngilu said she could not bear to watch as politicians tore the nation apart on tribal lines. "It will be very, very difficult indeed as government to deliver services when there is so much hostility inside and outside government," she said.

William Ruto, secretary-general of KANU, the main opposition party, urged Kibaki to hold elections. "We do not believe the country should be subject to anxiety or suspense," he said.

(Additional reporting by Katie Nguyen, Guled Mohamed and George Obulutsa)