FAKE: This candidate shortlist for ambassador and heads of foreign missions positions is fabricated
The Public Service Commission has disowned the letter.
This document on Facebook supposedly with shortlisted candidates for positions of Kenyan ambassadors and heads of foreign missions is FAKE.
The 10 May 2023-dated list was published on the Public Service Commission’s letterhead and has Kenya’s Coat of Arms, making it look like a legitimate government document.
The 20 names in the list are of persons supposedly shortlisted for the senior positions. The shortlisting, the document claims, was done in accordance with Article 155 (3) (a) of the Kenyan Constitution.
But is the list authentic?
First, we checked the Kenyan Constitution Article 155 (3) (a) and established that it is about the appointment of principal secretaries and not ambassadors and heads of foreign missions.
According to the Foreign Service Act no 12 of 2021, Article 132 (2) (e) of the Kenyan Constitution mandates the President to nominate ambassadors and heads of missions whose appointment is subject to vetting by the National Assembly.
We checked the PSC website, official Twitter account and Facebook page, for any such advertisement, but there was none.
There was, however, this statement on the PSC website and social media pages disowning the list we are debunking.
“It has come to our attention that some fraudulent individuals are circulating a fake list of appointed Ambassadors and Heads of missions purporting to originate from the Public Service Commission. We would like to inform the public that the list is fake and should be treated as such,” the PSC said.
PesaCheck has examined the document on Facebook supposedly showing shortlisted candidates for the positions of Kenya’s ambassadors and heads of foreign missions and found it to be FAKE.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck fact-checker Rodgers Omondi and edited by PesaCheck senior copy editor Cédrick Irakoze and acting chief copy editor Francis Mwaniki.
The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck’s managing editor Doreen Wainainah.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape the government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water/sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.
