30 June 2016

Why I’m concerned about the size of our Cabinet



Anyone who has sat on a board of an institution will concur with me that its efficiency diminishes with size. There are always two likely scenarios that happen with large boards. Either decisions will take very long to be arrived at or the head of the board will in many cases singularly make decisions with little or no consultation of the other board members. A third scenario is also common; technical people end up making decisions and running things without that much needed guidance or advisory counsel from the board.






Since the ascendency of NRM to power in 1986, Uganda’s Cabinet has increased by nearly threefold from 30 in 1986 to more than 80 in 2016. While Uganda is seeking to enlarge its Cabinet, Tanzania, the most populated country in the East African Community, has just downsised its Cabinet from 30 to 19 ministers. Kenya, a comparatively stronger economy in the region, has a cabinet of 22.






With the 2016-2021 Uganda’s ministerial Cabinet hitting record figures, I wait with bated breath to see how effectively functional it will be. The key mandate of the Cabinet is to collectively make decisions and play an advisory role. It is certainly difficult for such a large number to plot strategy.






I do not discount the fact that some of the Cabinet folk are people of superior intellect. However, I am concerned about the body’s ability to collectively, and proficiently decide government’s direction.






If you go back in history, one of the Cabinets that has been credited as the most efficient had only nine members. It was the cabinet of Britain’s Sir Winston Churchill. It is this Cabinet that successfully coordinated Britain’s World War II defence (1939-1945).






Large Cabinets not only add a burden on the public purse but also reduce Cabinet to a mere talking shop, without real decision making capabilities.






This unprecedented inflation in the size of the Cabinet could also be read as contempt for public’s sentiments with respect to the cries around the burgeoning public administration expenditure. The bigger the size of Cabinet, the bigger the government spending, the larger the deficits, government wage consumption, etc.






For Uganda’s case, there may be another hidden political angle to the increase; may be this has not been extensively discussed in the public domain. It is to do with the politics of parliamentary control. An increase in the number of ministers correspondingly means a decrease in the number of back bench MPs in the governing party. This inadvertently helps extend the hegemony of the Executive over Parliament. At a time when there is a lot of speculation around some serious constitutional changes being planned by the Executive, could this have also informed the surge in the cabinet size?
I am tempted to believe that in Uganda’s case today, the number of ministers is influenced by political expediency rather than strategic calculations.






Increasingly, Cabinet posts are being used as a currency for buying various political support bases or quelling down factions that can threaten government or its existence.
We need lean but stronger teams that will effectively plot and deliver on the national development agenda.






Mr Kaheru is the coordinator, Citizens’ Coalition for Electoral Democracy in Uganda.
ckaheru@gmail.com






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