APRM HAS FAILED, SAYS MINISTER DALMAS OTIENO

By NATION CORRESPONDENT Posted Sunday, March 6 2011 at 20:41

A Cabinet minister has said the African Peer Review Mechanism process has failed.

Mr Dalmas Otieno, the Public Service minister told a gathering of African envoys in Nairobi that most African leaders lack the confidence to call their peers to order when they go wrong.

Mr Otieno was speaking when he met the envoys to brief them on the forthcoming Conference of African ministers of Public/Civil Service (Camps) that Kenya is set to host in April.

Camps is a programme under the auspices of African Union set to support transformative drive of national public administration in Africa through initiation of reforms, codes and standards.

Mr Otieno said: “You don’t expect an African leader to call his peers to order when they go wrong. They are not expected to fight in public.”

APRM was founded in 2003 as a mutually agreed instrument voluntarily acceded to by AU member states as a self-monitoring mechanism.

It was meant to monitor the performance of African governments and punish defaulters. Its mandate was to encourage conformity in regard to political, economic and corporate governance among African countries.

By 2010, 30 countries had formally joined the APRM. Kenya joined in March 2003. According to the minister, the APRM process, in most cases has not enjoyed public involvement in the evaluation of countries.

“We should tell our leaders that if they allow systems to be improved, they will become better, otherwise the continent will continue to be exploited,” he said.