The proposals in the package on appointments to the higher echelons of the public services and the higher judiciary via the Constitutional Council do not confer protection or equality of treatment to Secretaries of Ministries under Chapter VIII of the Constitutional Proposals. Secretaries of the Ministries broadly play dual roles at the highest levels as advisors to their Ministers and implementers of government policy. In the latter role they are held directly accountable as Chief Accounting Officers, sometimes vicariously before the Public Account Committee and in certain cases before Presidential Commissions of Inquiry when they have been indicted and called upon to explain their conduct and held personally responsible.
Secretaries are the linchpins of the government machinery.
For this reason they are paid the highest salaries in the regular public service. In the UK they are paid almost three times the salary of a top level medical specialist. During the last decade or two they have also become very vulnerable in the context of an over politicized climate of public administration. Perhaps they served their political masters too faithfully by offering advice that was politically palatable and got too closely identified with the politicians in power for accommodating their demands both fair and foul. But many were the innocent victims of an iniquitous state of affairs.