Will William Ruto serve the people or himself and his pals?

hearings rarely make for compulsive viewing. But few parliamentary committees are asked to vet nominees with pasts quite so contentious as some of those proposed by , Kenya’s new president (pictured). Take, for instance, Aisha Jumwa, Mr Ruto’s nominee for gender secretary, who has spent the past year juggling simultaneous murder and corruption trials. Or Mithika Linturi, put forward to run Kenya’s agriculture, who was charged last year with attempted rape. (Both deny all charges.)This should be red meat for any self-respecting watchdog committee. Yet its members have seemed strangely reluctant to munch. Ms Jumwa’s legal troubles elicited only a brief mention when she appeared before them on October 18th. Others who have been in and out of trouble in the past got an even easier ride. The committee did not ask one nominee why he once threatened to sexually assault a female with a beer bottle and glossed over British court documents suggesting that another had taken bribes from two British businessmen jailed in 2015. Njuguna Ndung’u, the president’s treasury secretary, happily batted away politely couched questions about the scandals that marred his time as the governor of Kenya’s central bank.