Innovations for Successful Societies AN INITIATIVE OF THE WOODROW WILSON SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS AND THE BOBST CENTER FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE Series: Powersharing Interview no.: A 19 Interviewee: Leon Schreiber Interviewer: Raila Odinga Date of Interview: 15 September 2015 Location: Nairobi, Kenya Innovations for Successful Societies, Bobst Center for Peace and Justice Princeton University, 83 Prospect Avenue, Princeton, New Jersey, 08544, USA www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties SCHREIBER: Thank you again for agreeing to talk with us. If we can go back to the very beginning, after the power sharing deal has been signed and the fanfare is over and you walked into your new office. What were the challenges that you faced in the very beginning? ODINGA: This is a government formed against a background of conflict. It was not like you can say it was a coalition of the willing. It was a coalition that was imposed by circumstances that existed in the country at that time. Therefore you know there was a lot of tension in the country, a lot of fears and suspicions among the coalition partners. We had now the responsibility of leading this coalition government. Our President, who was head of state, was sharing power in terms of running the government. There were co-partners, equal partners, sharing power on a 50-50 basis. It was a cabinet that was split right in the middle, 50% from the PNU, the Party of National Unity and 50% from the ODM (Orange Democratic Movement), my party. There was supposed to be portfolio balancing. As you know we had argued for a long time how to balance portfolios to share power. SCHREIBER: Yes. ODINGA: Particularly when it came to the so called "strategic ministries." But my first challenge was to remove the divide, so that we have one uniform government. We don't have this tug-of-war of ODM and PNU in the government, so that we have one cabinet. My responsibility as the prime minister was spelled out in the agreement to supervise and coordinate functions of the government, including government departments and so on. The first cabinet meeting, chaired by the President and assisted by me, made it clear that there were not two governments, there was one government and that ministers needed to work together as one team. As you know we had a cabinet of 42 ministers. Ministries had been split in order to satisfy the demands of both sides of the coalition so it was a very bloated cabinet. I consulted with my team and I proposed to the President that in order to have efficiency in the workings that we divide the cabinet into sectors so there was an infrastructure sector, a financial sector, productive sector and service ministries. This was agreed and I worked it out in my office. We classified these ministries: roads, transport, housing, energy, water, and so on. These were infrastructure ministries. Then there were the security sector ministries, those that deal with internal security for example, defense, home affairs, prisons and so on, all these security sector ministries. Then the other ones were productive sector ministries, for example, industrialization, agriculture, several others. Service sector was education, health and so on. So we divided these ministries. All the committees-these were now committees, sub-committees of the cabinet. All the committees of the cabinet are chaired by the prime minister. So I would chair the meetings before the main cabinet. The main cabinet usually met on Thursdays. Preparatory meetings were held on Tuesdays in the Office of the Prime Minister. If a ministry has business to be presented to the cabinet, a memo or memoranda, and wanted to present these memos, they were submitted to my office and I had a secretary deal with it. Then they would be brought to the committee meeting under my chairmanship. The committees allowed ministers to come with their permanent secretaries and those experts so they could explain in detail the purpose of the memorandum and the technical details of the memorandum. So that we would avoid elaborate discussions in the main cabinet. Because in the main cabinet ministers are there alone. They don't come with their permanent secretaries or their experts. Sometimes they go and meet other ministers who are more knowledgeable on the subjects than themselves and they cannot answer. In the committee the experts come and they are able to take the members through the entire document so the members are convinced. This therefore spared the main cabinet the time of having to go into the details. So the minister would just move the document briefly to the members, the purpose of the bill, the policy document, then inform the President that we already discussed this matter extensively in the committee. So if the member has certain concerns that are raised other than members of the committee, that way we are able to do business much faster. SCHREIBER: In terms of that process whereby, the memorandums from the ministries were actually drawn up, what were the kind of measures or standards that you put in place if there were these standards to make sure that ministers were clear as to what the requirements were when you were presenting memorandum to cabinet? How did you approach that whole issue? ODINGA: Let me go back. When we first started, we announced that it was necessary to have a meeting first of the cabinet ministers with their permanent secretaries, so that we could discuss the framework of the cabinet, the government, how we wanted to run the government. So we held a workshop at the Kenyan Institute of Monetary Studies where we brought in experts to try to explain to the ministers and the permeant secretaries how we intended to run the government, how the government should run. As a preamble to that discussion, sorry, not a preamble, first these experts talked generally about how to run an efficient government system, what are the weaknesses of the previous regimes and so on, with improvement. I presented a paper and because when you have a clear vision yourself, a vision of the direction you want to take the country. I had one of my heroes, Lee Kuan Yew, former prime minister of Singapore and a book, From Third to First World. I had copies of it. I told members that this is the experience and this is a must-read for every minister and permanent secretary. How they were able to transform a third-world economy, just an island outpost there from third world to first world, all the ambition that it took. I told them that this is the direction we need to go to move this country from where it is to where it should go. Then I now went on to explain that this was in the paper that I presented to the members and initiated debate between the permanent secretaries and ministers so they could act on this. Those who spoke were very supportive of what I had said. It said, "Look, there is no way, we just learn how to do it. It is very clear and simple what we want to do and how we want to do it. We told them there was a lot of wastage in the country through corruption and that we intended to fight corruption very strongly. Secondly, time management. It was very important. A lot of man hours are wasted. People do, I don't know what, talk to people, and are late to work or they report on time but they just sit down there and they're reading newspapers, doing nothing. So we are not able to quantify what somebody has been doing the whole day. This was near the work of them and that as permanent secretaries who are trying to manage it. They must themselves be disciplined and be able to use this discipline across the board, out of the shop floor. Then so once we agreed now on the framework of how we wanted to run the government, then we tasked them, each one, to prepare a strategic plan for their ministries and we gave a deadline. Within one month, two months, they must have a strategic plan for each ministry. That strategic plan will be reviewed by experts in the office of the prime minister. Then we also established what we called the "performance-contracting system" which had not been there. Working with the office of the British prime minister I actually-I went to London and had discussions with Minister Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister. He introduced me to the head of the prime minister's delivery unit. He asked them to give my office support and they gave me experts who came here. Through working with them, my team first set up a strategic plan and then set up the prime minister's delivery unit here. Working together with the department we established a performance-contracting department in the Office of the Prime Minister headed by a permanent secretary. They worked out a system of evaluating performance. First of all for each ministry-I would prepare a strategic plan. They would then now come and sign a performance contract with the prime minister. That was done publicly. We would go down to a place called the Kenyatta International Conference Centre and the media would be invited there. Each minister would sign and the permanent secretary signs and the prime minister countersigns. That usually took half a day. Once that was done, then we'd go and implement. They would now establish a system of doing performance evaluation. So the performance-contracting department would hire experts, consultants from the universities and from the private sector who would go and do performance evaluation. Once this is done then there would be an occasion when the results would be released. Again, this was done publicly, at the same venue. This time the President would come as well. They now read the results. SCHREIBER: I'm just wondering in this whole approach of implementing the performance evaluation system, surely you encountered opposition there. How did you go about reaching a consensus or an agreement? I can imagine ministers, from the other side of the divide as it were, were perhaps not too happy to have themselves being evaluated by your office. So how did you go about forging that consensus to actually have people buy into the system? ODINGA: You see first at the cabinet meeting I actually raised the issue that we must run one government. The President locked horns with his team and told them that they must obey whatever I tell them and they must work under me and there would be no other government. They did want the option of quitting. That way this helped instill discipline and therefore all those ministers were answerable to me fully. I was to ensure that there was neutrality. I did not give any preferential treatment to some ministers over the others. The evaluation was done professionally by independent people; whose integrity was above board. Usually you had university professors. We had private consultants; reputable firms like PricewaterhouseCoopers and so on, other consultant management companies. They did a professional job as a team. The sectors were categorized. We had the ministries as I mentioned. Then we had universities, public universities, then we had state parastatals, state corporations. SCHREIBER: These were all signed up for performance contracting? ODINGA: Yes. Then we had local governments. So the result would be that many ministries would be rated from number one to number forty-two. Then the universities equally, number one to number X, the last. Then the parastatals, the state corporations, they were evaluated separately. Then the local governments would be evaluated separately. You see? SCHREIBER: Yes. ODINGA: Then we would give the results, why? We had an award system where number one, number two and number three would get trophies. Then of course number 39, 40, 41, 42. So what happened, this gives a sense of competition because from thereon they would be debating among ministries. The permanent secretary and minister would convene a meeting to find out why the ministry performed poorly. There were a lot of arguments. In the end it had the desired effects because the following year you would see changes. The biggest one was the office of the Attorney General which had been last, the last performance and it became first the subsequent performance a year later. Then the other ministries complained the wrong criteria were being used to rate them. Like the Ministry of Foreign Affairs complained bitterly that they had been unfairly rated because most of their services are outside the country [laughter] to evaluate them on. But the systems have been used in other countries to do that kind of evaluation. I think the Indian system is the best. So they didn't want to be evaluated subsequently but we forced them to accept, to remain in the system. SCHREIBER: If we step back a little bit from this maybe and go to the issue of appointments actually. You mentioned in the beginning the process around appointing the ministers initially as something that clearly also reading about it stands out as an important event in the life of the coalition. Would you maybe talk a little bit about that, how that process worked, how you managed to appoint ministers and also divide the portfolios? ODINGA: First dividing portfolios became a very contentious issue. The accord, merely talked of a 50-50 sharing and a portfolio balance, but now to negotiate and integrate who gets which ministry, it is a very contentious issue. Therefore it delayed the formation of the cabinet. This was a stalemate. Now the country was again very restless. The media was making a little noise, saying that we were delaying unnecessarily. Then ultimately the President sent someone to me. We held discussions and we agreed that-it was suggested that we meet at a retreat, just the two of us. We finally agreed and flew to a secluded lodge at a place called Sagana, It was completely unused, it had never been used that lodge, so nobody would suspect that we would be going there. So we went there. I was accompanied with one person and he was accompanied with one person. After long, long haggling and so on we agreed on what was thought of as a compromise. My people didn't appreciate it at that time when finally it was announced but later on they realized that we got the best in terms of service ministries. We had the Ministry of Water, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Roads, the Ministry of Housing. We got the-we shared Education. We got Health-partially shared but the bulk of it went to us. They got Finance and Defense and Internal Security and so on. Then we put names to the ministries, there and then. SCHREIBER: At the same retreat, at this lodge? ODINGA: At this lodge. There were some names the President did not quite like on my list but he had to give way because I also had commitments to my people that I was not willing to betray. When we came back we announced the cabinet. The first few were appointed and those were happy. That would always be the case, you will never be able to satisfy everybody but that is how we did it. So that was the beauty of making this to become a team. It is like selecting a football team, names, so-and-so and so-and-so. Now you make them play together. SCHREIBER: Exactly. I can imagine also that later on in the process that the issue of-the dismissal of ministers for example, and certainly there were moments of controversy, perhaps obstacles that you encountered later on when ministers were dismissed but then there was a disagreement between you and the President. Can you talk a bit about how that played out and how you sought to overcome these obstacles that later came across the road? ODINGA: There were occasions when there was a bit of tension, a bit of unexpected situations. The coalition made a very difficult situation. Like when the Minister for Finance was forced to step aside over the disposal or the sale of one of his assets and his stake, the President was under a lot of pressure. First the minister said he was not going to resign, it was Minister Amos Kimunya, the Minister for Finance. But the pressure became too much. Ultimately the President asked him to step aside, and he did step aside. Then the President had a big problem. He did not have on his team an economist or financial expert who could replace this minister. Then he could also now not take one of my people. I could not bring in a new person because the minister had just been suspended pending investigations. So I had better qualified people who could easily replace or act in that situation but they brought in somebody else who was not a financial person who the President appointed as Minister of Finance. That was one case. Another case was when some ministers had been mentioned in some improprieties, financial improprieties, and more investigation needed to be done. It was required that these ministers step aside. They were not stepping aside when they knew that the President was under a lot of pressure. So I decided to take this-I discussed it with him but he was reluctant. There was too much public pressure. So I decided to act alone and suspend these ministers. Then because there was pressure on the President and so they said-the court said there were not consultations between the two of us and there had not been sufficient consultations, therefore they reversed the decision. At least I had been exonerated from blame because there was a little blame that we were tolerating corruption in the government. Those did bring some tensions. The other one was the appointment of people to constitutional offices. When the new constitution now came into life, there was a requirement to appoint the new chief justice; the old one was supposed to retire by a certain date. The new Attorney General, the Director of Public Prosecutions, and the Director of Budgets, are the other positions. Now the President was to appoint some people who according to them were user friendly but these are very strategic positions, Chief Justice, the Attorney General, the Director of Public Prosecutions. That was the Criminal Justice System and then the Director of Budgets. I happened to have been out of the country in Addis Ababa attending an AU (African Union) meeting. The President tried to reach me on the phone but I was in a meeting. Then he decided to make appointments of some individuals. When I came back I disowned-I was asked when I was in Addis Ababa if I was consulted, I said, "No, I never was consulted." When I came back I was confronted with the press. I said, "I had not been consulted. The law requires consultations in the hope that we do this." The names were supposed to be submitted to parliament and the President decided to submit the names to Parliament without even going through my office. I was the chief government's spokesperson in Parliament. In Parliament there was always something called "the Prime Minister's question time," one hour, every Wednesday when I went to Parliament to make a policy statement and answer questions from members. So I wrote the Speaker and disowned the list, which was brought and said this had not gone through the due process as stipulated in the accord. It became a major issue and the Speaker had to make a ruling on it. The Speaker ruled in my favor that indeed the matter needed consultations. They even went on to define what consultation means, not just that you make a phone call to somebody but they are consulted. It had to be in writing. The appointment had been nullified so then we put in motion the process of competitive recruitment of the officers through interviewing, through a panel set up. When that happened only the Attorney General was on the original list of the President and ended up being selected. The Chief Justice was dropped, a new one was selected, the current one. The Director of Public Prosecutions, another one and Director of Budget was another person all together. SCHREIBER: So in a way you shifted the locus of decision making to this panel away from perhaps just the consultations between the two principals. ODINGA: The President's man would go and look at the President and say this man can serve our interest before the names have been reviewed. SCHREIBER: If we could talk quickly maybe about the relationship you had in managing the cabinet with the Secretary to Cabinet because you mentioned also in the book the phenomenon of the presidential circulars and the kind of perhaps tension and competition that there was between your two offices, the cabinet secretaries' and the prime minister's. How did you end up coming to a point where you could have shared priorities in the cabinet to make it function as well? ODINGA: You see the President had run a cabinet for five years before this grand coalition. I was one of his ministers. We were supposed to be a coalition but then they did not follow the lines of condition. We had signed an MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) of partiality, which was just dismissed as another piece of paper. That was what the paper was originally. So the result was just purely a single party government. This is where we disagreed fast. This was the reason why this time around we insisted that it must be entrenched in the constitution. So the way that we ran this government, the President appoints the ministers. There is usually an appointing letter which spells out the responsibilities as a minister, then the do's and don'ts and so on. Now this time things were different because we had an accord signed and entrenched in the constitution. Then I was surprised when I received the letter from the President going to appoint me as the prime minister and then spelling out my duties, my responsibilities. I was supposed to be a co-principal and equal partner. So I took exception at this development. I told him as much. I said that he should not have spelled out my terms of employment just like I would not be spelling out his terms of employment. We agreed. Then he gave instructions and then we put it in writing. That is what first caused the misunderstanding between us. We were eventually able to air it out because they wanted to treat me as the Vice President. See, well lower than the Vice President. They wanted the Vice President to be second to the President and then the prime minister in the kind of pecking order. I took exception; I said "No. The prime minister is a co-partner, is a co-President." So it is not a prime minister in the true sense of the world. SCHREIBER: Yes. ODINGA: I am a coalition partner with the President. My party had more members of Parliament than the President's party. I got more presidential votes then he did get so therefore I should be the senior partner but I left him to be the head of state. So I said I could not be the third in command. I was willing to accept to be number two in pecking order because the President was doubling as a head of state. So I said that the prime minister (Vice President) must come after me. We had to actually make public challenge to this because they were insisting. I remember one public function in which I told them that I was being invited first to speak and then invite the Vice President and then invited the President. I said no, as a co-President. They had done it several times so I said, one day just publically and said, "The Vice President should go first." Then they insisted and insisted. Then I went to speak, by the time I had finished I called the President and said, so the President went there. He then called the Vice President to speak again. These major logistics led to further discussions. Ultimately they decided to change it. Now the Vice President would go and speak, would invite me to come and speak, and then I was asked-they would invite the President to speak, so he would act as an MC. SCHREIBER: Two more quick questions. How do you see the role of the international community? You mentioned the international experts you had from the UK (United Kingdom). Generally how did you view their role? Was it the positive one? Did it help you in achieving the kind of results you wanted and maybe after that you can just offer a few reflections on how you thought cabinet actually operated? Did service delivery improve? Did governance improve under the system that you had? What would you have done differently perhaps? ODINGA: First in conflict resolution when we had turmoil in the country, I think the international community acted well and fast. The first person to call me was Gordon Brown who offered assistance in mediation. Then there was the German Foreign Minister who also called me. Then I received a call from Condoleezza Rice. Then I received a call from a senator then, Barack Obama, who called on the need to desist from escalation and that we should give the decision a chance. Gordon Brown is the one who first suggested Kofi Annan and then former Sierra Leone President [Ahmad] Tejan Kabbah, and then they eventually asked John Kufuor, the Ghanaian President to come who came and then after talking he recommended Kofi who was initially rejected by the other side but eventually accepted. Then other African heads of states, former President [Benjamin] Mkapa, President [Kenneth] Kaunda, Quett Masire of Botswana, Desmond Tutu, Bishop, they all came here. I just want to say that international community support was-Condi Rice came. SCHREIBER: Even after the actual signing of the agreement did these people stay involved in some way? Did they continue to offer support to you? ODINGA: They offered support at times. I visited the UK, was formally received by the prime minister. I came to the US and met with President Obama. I had a meeting with-the meeting with President [Jakaya] Kikwete came before, the day of signing of the accord. I had a meeting with then Egyptian President at the time Hosni Mubarak. The German Chancellor Angela Merkel came here for a visit. The French then prime minister I also met with him. So generally the international community was very engaged and supportive. SCHREIBER: If we look back, like I said, the governance side of that coalition government, what are your thoughts on how the cabinet functioned? We mentioned these challenges and some of the obstacles that you also later encountered. How do you look back on it? How do you assess it? ODINGA: You see I mentioned initially it was a bloated cabinet because of special circumstances under which they were met. As you go back into Kenya's history everybody will tell you that this was the most productive cabinet. In terms of even service delivery, they will tell you that a lot was done in the period of the coalition government, than at any other time in post-independence history of Kenya. SCHREIBER: Why do you think that was? Because surely the odds were stacked against you with all the other elements involved. Why do you think it worked out that way? ODINGA: Because I think there was also competition within the coalition. The ministers were delivering better than the others. They were ODM on one side, PNU the other side. So everybody wanted this, they didn't want to let their side down. The PNU ministers didn't want to let (Mwai) Kibaki down; the ODM ministers didn't want to let me down. SCHREIBER: Since they had the kind of objective measurement of their performance, instead of having more conflict perhaps because of not wanting to let you down, they channeled this maybe in a constructive way because that kind of competition surely could have been negative as well, right? ODINGA: Exactly. But I think you see again, because you have separate things here. The President was now left with other works of governance, issues of opening ceremonial things, opening institutions, giving a talk here and there. Then I was doing the management, the day-to-day running of the government and being hands on to ensure that other ministries were working. Then we also had a think tank as mentioned, National Economic and Social Council, NESC, which we had formed earlier to come up with ideas of development and to establish those as a routine. So we put in there experts outside of the country and those who were in the country. We had for example an expert from Singapore, another one from Malaysia, another one from South Korea. Then we had some locally from Kenya, from the private sector, the Kenya Private Sector Alliance, senior bankers chaired by Mr. James Mwangi who is the MD [Managing Director] of the Equity Bank, one of the biggest banks around here. We had professors from the university, people from research institutions and cabinet ministers, some cabinet ministers from strategic ministries who were sitting there. It was co-chaired by the President and the prime minister. The way things worked out the President only opened it and each year would come just once but I would chair most of the sessions, meeting quarterly we would meet to review the situation. So it is the one that came up with things like the standard gauge railway. SCHREIBER: Okay, okay. ODINGA: The Lamu Port, the South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport Corridor, the idea of special economic zones, the new airport which is now under construction is called Greenfields Airport. SCHREIBER: And these ideas fed into the cabinet meetings, the committee meetings that you had? ODINGA: Yes, these meetings there would come up with ideas. First they'd make a presentation, for example let's look at energy. We would have some experts talking about Energy. The subject is open to discussion. Before that, what had happened was for NESC to set up Vision 2030, looking for development in the country. How do you see, versus now, our destination in 2030? How do you get there? This is what you want; you want the country to be a middle-income economy by 2030. What is it that must be done to reach there in terms of infrastructure, roads, water, housing, energy and so on and so forth? What should be our generation capacity to allow us to get there, like through industrialization. So that had been actually coined by the NESC. SCHREIBER: Okay. ODINGA: So now once it is said there, it is said this next meeting we will talk about energy. There now a paper would be presented. We'd look at it. What are the options that we have? What about hydro? How much can we generate through hydro? So much potential, what is the potential? What about fossil fuels, how about thermal? How about renewables? This geothermal potential [Indecipherable]. As soon as we study it we must apply it properly. The wind, solar? The benefits? Then how do you responding to these kinds of projects. All these were ideas which were being bounced around at NESC. SCHREIBER: Originated. ODINGA: Even roads. How do you run a road network in the country, then water and irrigation? So you see some of the projects that this government is now trying to implement, all consumers at that time. Because NESC was meeting regularly, they would help us during emergencies like when meteorological department had predicted for example El Niño coming. Then there must be preparations. In the Office of the Prime Minister we had the disaster management committee. So we would come up with intervention measures that were required to deal with the possible consequences of the El Niño. Drought is coming. We expect that this year we will only be able to harvest so many million bags of strategic foods like maize, like wheat, vegetables and so on and so forth. How do we deal with this? How much maize do we need to import so that we don't run out of supplies at a strategic time. How do we raise the funding? We are faced with this financial crisis. We had people like my office had an adviser, Professor [Hiroyuki] Hino from Japan. I had got him from a friend that told me that he had been here in the '90s. He was working with the World Bank. He was the guy who had helped uncover one of the biggest financial scandals in the country called Goldenberg. So I asked-I met this lady called Professor [Sadako] Ogata. Madam Ogata was the head of JICA, Japan International Cooperation Agency at a meeting in Cape Town and told her that I was looking for Professor Hino, who used to be working here but is now in Japan. Two days later she was in Nairobi from Cape Town and she called me and told me that she was at the Japanese Embassy and tracked Professor Hino. He is teaching at Kobe University in Japan and she is able to release him. When she gets back to Japan she will release him. So Hino came here and worked for me for that period of time and he was a real asset, having been at the World Bank and here in the country. Whenever we faced financial crisis he would advise the Treasury. This is how to deal with A, B, C, D. When I left the government, I left him there. He is the one also he used to work as an adviser at the NESC but after six months he told me I'm leaving because nobody needs me here; I'm wasted. So he left, he went to Yale. Now he has been teaching at Yale. Last year I found him there. Now he is going to Cape Town. SCHREIBER: He is in Cape Town? ODINGA: He is in Cape Town now. Another disappointing thing is that NESC never met ever since we left the government. I chaired the last NESC meeting. It was like completely abandoned. There was another secretariat called Vision 2030 which is almost now just limping. SCHREIBER: Any final thoughts? If you had to give advice to someone in your position today in a different country who has to now deal with these same issues of running a government, running a cabinet, making sure it delivers. Anything that we haven't spoken about that you think would be crucial for that person to know from your experience? ODINGA: You see it is very different running one unit of the government or running a coalition. My experience this time around was a coalition government where power was shared. We tried to make it as united as is possible to deliver. I'm sure it may be easier if you are not doing a coalition government. My advice for those who will have the possibility of running a coalition government is that one, you must run it as one government. You must create a team out of the two teams so that it becomes seamless in order to be able to deliver and ministers will see each other as partners, as colleagues, not as competitors. If there is competition it should just be in terms of performance but not because of is this party or this party or this party. That is what tears coalitions apart. SCHREIBER: The crucial thing that made them a team, what was that? Was that the agreement between you and the President that this is how it should be and there is no other way? ODINGA: Exactly. I told the President, "I know that you want to leave a legacy." That I even said when we were finalizing the agreement. I said that I was the one who won the election, the President lost it, but I am ready to help create a legacy of a system that works, being the President who presided over transition from failure to success. If he gives me the opportunity I will show him how to do it and how not to do it. What we must have is complete trust, well-meaning because if he succeeds then I will also have succeeded. If he fails we will have jointly failed. SCHREIBER: Yes. ODINGA: Therefore we need to give that trust and he did give that trust and he told his people. It was known there that he would never contradict me. This is how to do it and the ministers knew it that he trusted my judgment. I think that is important, it is good advice. SCHREIBER: Yes. ODINGA: The other one is to come up with clear work plan, a strategic plan, so that each and every minister knows what they are supposed to do. That is irrespective of whether it is a coalition or it is a unitary government so that you can be able to quantify the work. Otherwise you'd just be groping in the dark. You don't know where you're coming from of where you're going. I think that is very crucial to any government. SCHREIBER: Your Excellency, thank you very much for talking to us. Innovations for Successful Societies Series: Power Sharing Oral History Program Interview number: A19 ______________________________________________________________________ Use of this transcript is governed by ISS Terms of Use, available at www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties