Gitau Warigi
22 June 2008
column
Nairobi — It is not entirely far-fetched to draw parallels between a Kenyan MP and a hyena. You see that same greedy eye in search of a free meal, and the total lack of table manners when, figuratively, it comes to eating in excess.
MPs are no longer just a menace. They have become scavengers. They are now busy spinning the fiction that they pay for our weddings, our school fees, our medical bills and our funerals. Even if they do, so what?
They are not under some constitutional obligation to do so. It's bad manners to demand favours on the claim that you operate as a charitable enterprise. Who required you to do so?
From the rough research I have done, I discovered that any well-to-do citizen of this country gets more or less the same number of invitations for fund-raisers as the average MP does, and these good citizens don't demand tax breaks just because they help out. Besides, this lot are not famed for issuing dud cheques.
Nor do the ordinary folk cry foul after filling out the numerous and admittedly annoying "collection cards" thrust on us in offices and social places.
I discovered something else too. MPs are not averse to inviting themselves into some function, the more glittering the better.
These are functions where their cash is not terribly needed, but where they cleverly calculate there is scope for free political mileage.
I once stumbled into a house where a respected bishop was paying a private visit, and sure enough the local MP was there acting like he was the host, much as I later found out nobody had invited him.
Meanwhile, it will require a small miracle for a peasant who is genuinely needy to get facetime with her MP. If you hang around an MP for some considerable time, you will discover the hordes who follow them and wander around their offices are the same lot of activists and political hacks the MPs use for their political errands.
These are the chaps you see criss-crossing the constituencies during election campaigns, beating up supporters of opponents. If the little handouts MPs offer go anywhere, it is to this parasitic lot.
No self-respecting constituent with something to do will waste his time week after week trying to nail down an MP whose greatest talent is to be invisible.
The pugnacious Ikolomani MP Bonny Khalwale easily gets the crassness award for wondering whether, by taxing them, somebody wants to make the MPs "as miserable as our constituents?"
Now we get it. The purpose of being in Bunge is not to be miserable. Thanks Mheshimiwa (honourable) for the honesty.
Once upon a time, MPs had the self-respect, even when earning a meagre Sh12,000, to make do from other occupations. Dr Khalwale is a surgeon. He is also a fervent fan of the rather brutal sport of bull-fighting, though I have no idea whether he gets any income from this.
As for the peculiarly named Nemesyus Warugongo of Kieni, he thinks, equally peculiarly, that "most Kenyans are too poor and basically rely on MPs for survival."This is too much. It is like a tick which feeds on your tax blood complaining you are thin.
If I were rich like the MPs, I would be tempted to look at them as a comedy troupe. They are not even ashamed to be told they are talking in bad taste.
Am reminded of another lot who love to loll in obscene perks - judges - and who are understood to be mulling menacingly againt the tax proposals, which earmark them as well.
MPs earn the princely sum of Sh851,000 each. That is enough to pay 85 primary school teachers for a month. Multiply the sum with the 222 honourables who sit in Parliament, and you wonder why some primary schools should be suffering such an acute shortage of teachers.
Being an MP is a good, indolent life. You get to sit for only one full day a week - Wednesday. Sittings for Tuesdays and Thursdays are half-day (afternoon only).
And you don't even have to attend. If you do, you are free to quietly doze off in your seat. The rest of the week is yours to do whatever you like.
And lest you forget, the working weeks are interrupted by long recesses. Real work is done in the committees, where only the busy few offer themselves.
You get paid for that, too. The mortgage scheme is a generous one, at low interest. The car loan is actually a grant. How dare anybody dream of causing discomfort to these prima donnas?
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