Leadership and Governance Monitoring in Kenya
Kenya has held general elections almost every five years without fail since independence. Presidential, parliamentary and civic authority election campaigns are characterized by loads of enticing promises but once the leaders are elected, the entire nation goes into five years of disillusionment and self castigation as almost all the campaign promises are traded off with issues of leaders' self interest and self preservation. Majority of the leaders spend the five year term aligning and realigning to parties and personalities expected to influence success at the next general elections. In the ensuing power plays, the sole loser is the electorate because the scheming and counter scheming goes on at the expense of service delivery to the electorate. It is no wonder that after 45 years of independence from the British, Kenyans are still blaming colonialism as the cause of their underdevelopment. It is lost on the citizens that in the early 1970s, Kenya was ahead of countries like South Korea in development but at present, South Korea is a development assistant partner to Kenya.
Over time, the Kenyan electorate has reached a point of wondering whether things will ever change where elected leaders would keep their campaign promises to the letter after elections. There are many reasons why elected leaders fail to keep their promises, the main one being that the electorate never actually gives the leaders specific terms of reference when they elect them. The electorate in most cases trusts that their representatives know what is best for development of their constituencies. In reality, nothing can be further from the truth as many elected leaders believe their development role is to provide personalized solutions of their constituents' problems. In any case, during the election campaigns, the candidates traverse the electoral areas dishing out free goodies to all and sundry and promising more in the future if elected. Members of parliament in Kenya are on record having said that they need high tax-free salaries because they are providers to their constituents, paying school fees, meeting wedding, funeral and health expenses for their constituents.
At infotrackea.co.ke, we believe that it is time that the role of elected leaders and the expectations of the constituents were aligned so that leaders are able to deliver tangible strategic development benefits to their constituents. At the same time, constituents would be able to objectively determine if their leaders have delivered as expected. That way, a good leader would concentrate on delivering development to his/her constituents, while ministers, the prime minister and the president and would in addition deliver both nationally and internationally. The speaker and deputy speaker would deliver to parliament.
We have therefore come up with a leadership and governance monitoring and evaluation model that we hope leaders and the electorate will find useful in improving transparency and accountability of each Kenyan leader's development service to the electorate during every five year leadership term.
The model is result oriented with each leader stating his/her planned key results. Each Member of Parliament (MP) and councilor will be required to give five well thought out key results that they plan to deliver to their constituents, based on the National Vision 2030 and the strategic development needs of the respective constituency. The key results will also have a stated objective, performance indicators and implementation time lines. Annual monitoring and evaluation will be done and posted on infotrackea.co.ke to assess progress. A final assessment score in terms of percentage achievement will be given at the end of the five year leadership term.
Ministers will give 11 key results being five for the constituents, three national and three international. The President and the Prime Minister will give 15 key results being five to the constituents, five national and five international. The speaker and deputy speaker will each give eight key results deliverable to parliament.
We are further developing this concept and it will take us a while to post all the required information as we obtain it. Please stay with us to monitor leadership and governance in Kenya.
