Editor’s Note: John Obiero, writing from Kisii, weighs in on Speaker Moses Wetang’ula’s explosive revelation that TSC appointment letters are being handed to political leaders at State House by President William Ruto.
There are moments when a country hears something that should make the walls of its institutions tremble.
Speaker of the National Assembly Moses Wetang’ula’s revelation regarding TSC employment letters being distributed to political leaders at State House is a significant concern.
He was not recounting some rumour whispered in a bar or traded in a WhatsApp group.
Wetangula spoke of leaders accompanying him to State House and receiving teachers’ appointment letters from President William Ruto.
He further said some of those letters were later sold to desperate job seekers for as much as KSh400,000.
That should stop every Kenyan in their tracks.
Because behind every appointment letter is a Kenyan who applied, waited, qualified, and hoped.
Every letter sold for hundreds of thousands of shillings hides a Kenyan who may have been denied a chance they deserved.
And behind the entire episode lies a much bigger question:
When did a constitutional institution become a corridor through which political favours could walk?
Power Behind Institutions
This is precisely why some of us opposed William Ruto in 2022 and backed the Raila Odinga–Martha Karua ticket.
We feared that Kenya was placing the keys to an already powerful State in the hands of a politician whose understanding of power was deeply rooted in networks, alliances, and political patronage.
The fear was never simply about Ruto the politician.
It was about what happens when political power grows so powerful that institutions begin to orbit it.
This is the danger that Kenya now faces.
The Teachers Service Commission is not a political office.
It is a constitutional commission established under Article 237, with responsibility for registering, recruiting, and employing teachers.
That architecture matters.
It was designed to ensure that a teacher’s appointment follows a lawful institutional process, not the goodwill of a politician carrying appointment letters out of State House.
So when the Speaker of the National Assembly says political leaders receive TSC letters from the President, the issue is not merely that someone got a job.
The bigger question is whether the constitutional firewall separating political power from public recruitment is still standing.
And if that firewall has been breached, Kenyans have every right to ask who opened the gate.
The Envelope Economy
This is where the TSC revelations collide with another deeply troubling development.
A recent Public Service Commission audit found serious recruitment irregularities at the Office of the Attorney-General, including cases in which people were appointed to advertised positions despite not having applied for them.
The audit also identified appointments involving candidates who did not meet the required qualifications.
Put those two developments side by side, and the picture becomes difficult to ignore.
At one end is a constitutional commission whose recruitment process is now at the centre of an extraordinary disclosure by the Speaker of the National Assembly.
At the other is a State office where an official audit has exposed recruitment practices that raise fundamental questions about merit and due process.
This is no longer simply about individual jobs.
It is about the machinery that decides who gets them.
A public appointment should never arrive like a political gift wrapped in an envelope.
It should follow a clear chain: advertisement, application, shortlisting, interview, selection, and appointment.
Break that chain, and merit becomes theatre.
Once merit becomes theatre, the most qualified Kenyan can lose to the best-connected Kenyan.
And that is how a republic quietly slips into patronage.
The Old Shadow
This is also why comparisons with the Daniel arap Moi era refuse to disappear.
Not because Ruto is literally Moi reincarnated. History rarely returns wearing exactly the same clothes.
The deeper resemblance lies in something more unsettling: the temptation to make the State feel personal.
To make access to government depend on proximity to power.
What’s more, to make political loyalty more valuable than institutional procedure.
To make the State House gatekeeper more important than the institution established by law.
That is precisely what the 2010 Constitution was designed to prevent.
The Constitution sought to dismantle an older architecture of personalised power, a system in which the State could feel less like a public institution and more like a private compound whose gates opened for those who knew the right person.
That constitutional promise is now being tested.
And institutions rarely collapse with a bang.
They erode quietly.
One favour at a time.
One appointment at a time.
One unexplained letter at a time.
Then, one day, citizens discover that the institution still has a sign on the door but no longer controls what happens inside.
Show Us Process
This is why the answer should not be tribal applause or partisan outrage.
It should be sunlight.
If TSC appointment letters are being distributed through political leaders, Kenyans deserve to know how the process works.
Who applied?
Also, who was shortlisted?
Who was interviewed?
Also, who recommended the successful candidates?
Who authorised the appointments?
Who signed the letters?
And what, precisely, was State House’s role?
These are not unreasonable questions.
They are the minimum questions a constitutional democracy should ask when the country’s third-highest office makes such a startling disclosure.
And if the records show that everything was done lawfully, transparently, and according to TSC procedures, then scrutiny should pose no threat.
But if political access has become a shortcut around recruitment rules, Kenya has a much bigger problem than a few questionable appointment letters.
It means public employment is slowly being converted into political currency.
That is how patronage works.
First, politicians distribute opportunities.
Then citizens learn that connections matter more than qualifications.
Then qualifications become secondary.
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Finally, people stop asking what the law permits and start asking whom they know.
That is the road Kenya must refuse to travel.
Because a government job is not a personal favour from the President.
It is a public resource.
It belongs to the Kenyan people.
And the State is not a family estate. It is a republic.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the position of GOTTA.news. We welcome writers to give their views on various social and political issues.
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