Wiper leader Kalonzo Musyoka has given three public institutions seven days to disclose details of their recruitment over the past five years, saying he will seek court orders if they fail to provide the information.
In a statement issued on Friday, August 28, Mr Musyoka said the National Police Service Commission, Teachers Service Commission and Kenya Defence Forces should disclose who they have recruited, how many people have been hired, the basis used in the recruitment and the areas from which successful applicants came.
The former Vice-President said the demand followed allegations of political interference in recruitment, including claims involving the Teachers Service Commission.
“You cannot dismiss what National Assembly Speaker Moses Wetang'ula and Murang'a Woman Representative Betty Maina have said about TSC recruitment letters allegedly coming out of State House as just political noise,” Mr Musyoka said.
“When the Speaker of the National Assembly says something like this in public, it stops being gossip. It becomes a matter that this country must get to the bottom of.”
Mr Musyoka said information received by his side over recent months had raised concerns over how recruitment into the institutions was being conducted.
“We have been getting information for months that recruitment into these institutions has stopped reflecting who we are as a country, and that where a job comes from now depends less on merit and more on who you know or who you voted for,” he said.
“That is not how Article 232 of our Constitution was written, and it is certainly not how a republic is supposed to work.”
He said the three institutions should provide information that would show whether their recruitment processes complied with constitutional requirements on merit, fair competition and representation.
Mr Musyoka accused the Kenya Kwanza administration of using public jobs to reward political loyalty, saying any evidence of irregular recruitment should be made public.
“These institutions belong to Kenyans. They are not a basket of favours for Ruto's regime to dish out to friends and reward loyalty,” he said.
“If a young person in Kajiado, Makueni, or Taita Taveta is being locked out of a police or teaching job so that someone connected to State House can walk in instead, Ruto has some explaining to do, and whoever is behind this must be named.”
Mr Musyoka said he had directed MPs and lawyers allied to him to write to the three institutions within 48 hours seeking the information under laws governing access to information held by public bodies.
He said the seven-day deadline would begin once the letters were delivered to the institutions.
“I have already directed our MPs and our lawyers to write to these three institutions within the next 48 hours demanding this information in full, backed by the law that guarantees Kenyans access to information held by public bodies,” he said.
“The seven-day clock starts from when those letters land on their desks.”
Mr Musyoka said he would move to court if the institutions did not respond to the requests.
“If they choose silence instead of answers, we will go to court and ask a judge to compel them to disclose what they are hiding,” he said.
“I say this plainly: it is not a threat. It is what accountability looks like.”
He said the information sought would include the number of people recruited over the five-year period, the criteria used in selecting successful candidates and their regional distribution.
Mr Musyoka said the disclosures were necessary to establish whether recruitment into the institutions had been conducted fairly.
“Kenyans will get the truth about who is being hired into their institutions, and why, with or without State House's cooperation,” he said.
