When greed exceeds reason, the mind is bound to burst with corrupted thoughts and actions. This could be better expressed by the current cancerous breed of the MPs of Kenya who have exhibited greed since the first day that they were elected into office. The greed started as little murmurs and whispers between one or two newly elected MPs who were concealing their identity by then during the time the presidential petition was still in the hands of the Supreme Court. They were lamenting about their salaries which had been fixed by salaries and remuneration commission from a tune of over Ksh850 000 (add allowances and it runs to over Ksh1.2M) to over Ksh530 000 (excluding the above named allowances) yet they were claiming that this amount was ‘demeaning’ to their ‘social status.’ They were not lamenting over the salaries out of want or need, but evidently it was out if a show of greed. They wanted a salary hike! Soon the negatively induced courage spread like wildfire among the other MPs and soon they could speak out without fear of backlash. They knew that they had duped Kenyans into electing them, putting in mind that Kenyans are too quick to act and too quick to forget. They had duped Kenyans using rhetoric and sycophancy and buying out their votes by exploiting their poverty levels with minute hand cash handouts which could only sustain them for a day and leave them suffering, cursing and granting for the next five years! As usual, Kenyans had fallen into their trap and this time they had committed a felony that would even exceed the one committed by prison mongers combined! They had been duped like any other electioneering period into foregoing issue-based politics and service-oriented leaders over ethnically inclined politics and wealth politics. This issue I won’t delve into since it has been so talked about and bearing in mind that Kenyans have heeded to the call of ‘forget’ and ‘move on!’ The greed was further exacerbated by the fact that the ‘MPigs’ had tested the waters (Kenyans)and after finding them shallow (resilient, complacent, ignorant, silent, cowardly), they had delved deeper and deeper into the waters of the same greed and impunity well knowing that they were free from any chance of drowning or being massacred by opposing forces (Kenyans). Now the greedy pigs of George Orwell’s Animal Farm could come out in the open, speak with bloated pride in front of the media cameras and speak boisterously in parliament over the same issue of wanting ‘better remuneration’ to suit their ‘social status’ as ‘honorable members’ and ‘respected members of the society.’ They started threatening the independence of the Salaries and Remuneration Commission which is the public body empowered by the New Constitution to minimize disharmony in the public sector and encourage orderly wage and benefit negotiations. It must not shy away from addressing significant question of whether to raise the pay of those it considers relatively underpaid or, lower the salaries of the overpaid in order to reduce the wage bill which is over a third of our annual fiscal budget! Others like Duale, Linturi, Midiwo and the female MP named Wanga could even gather the courage to insult their electorate for reproaching them over the same greed! Nonetheless, it so happened that the Civil Society so loved Kenya that it gave its only begotten sons and daughters, that whomsoever believed in them could not wallow in self-pity and self-denial, but have everlasting democracy! The Civil Society had heard the cry of Kenyans, having extensively taught them about good governance before election period but ending up being ignored by the same people in an ask-hole behavioral response! (An ask-hole is a mild unofficial term describing a person who often asks what is right and appears to comprehend, but later consciously does the opposite.) The civil society had been vocal in teaching people about issue-based politics and how to send the members of the gluttonous 10th parliament packing and enabling them to identify potential leaders who had the people’s interests at heart, all in an effort to curb the wanton greed of the MPigs and their (possible) apprentices. The civil society even went to the extent of challenging the IEBC’s flawed elections and the presidential election results in a court suit and also engaged in a protest dubbed ‘Occupy Parliament’ on the 14th of may, 2013 to show the Kenyan solidarity against the conspiracy of MPs to inflate their salaries at a time when over 75% of the Kenyan populace lives in wanton poverty of below a dollar a day, yet the incumbent government had sugarcoated their manifesto about how they would harmonize the economic conditions of all Kenyans to achieve equity, equality and justice! It was to be a ‘Jubilee’ government! What was an apparently peaceful movement from Uhuru Park’s Freedom Corner towards the Tom Mboya monument and later towards parliament buildings where peace slogans were chanted, placards were waved high in the air admonishing the MPs greed, pigs were presented to depict the greed of the MPs and animal blood poured on the ground and on the pigs to signify as one writer put it ‘the cleansing of the parliament chambers of the evil deeds of the MPs’ soon became inverted. The police who are meant to serve the people soon became chameleons-changing-color and turned on the peaceful protesters throwing water, teargas and live bullets on them and the worst of all SOME WERE CAUGHT ON CAMERA CLOBBERING UNARMED PROTESTERS! They were reacting to ‘orders from above;’ protecting the few MPigs who never mind about their (police) poor remuneration, uninhabitable housing conditions, inflated prices of essential commodities among many other tribulations facing the police just like the common Mwananchi. Several of the protestors were arrested and 17 of them (led by the outspoken activist Boniface Mwangi) were arraigned court over what the prosecution termed ‘animal cruelty,’ ‘causing disturbance’ and ’breach of peace;’ the irony being that the police are the ones who did just that! This absurd system has kept the activists in and out of the courts with adjournments since they obviously lack concrete and reasonable grounds to prosecute the protestors. It is also totally absurd that animal rights superseded human rights with people condemning the use of pigs in the protests being the same ones who give a blind eye to atrocities conducted by such impunity ridden regime!! Back to the greedy house of impunity that is the 11th parliament, on exactly the 28th of may around 5pm, they have passed a bill declaring all the gazettements by the Salaries and Remuneration Commission concerning their salary hikes as scrapped and this apparently gives them a leeway to exploit the dubious mechanism of using the Public Service Commission to achieve their gluttonous endeavor. Co-incidentally, this same day is the one that Kenya Power Company (KPLC) declared a national power blackout and, since thieves steal in the dark, the same MPs passed the bill at this exact time when Kenyans have no access to media viewership concerning the parliamentary proceedings at that time due to the power outage! The MPigs have had their share of the stolen public gain, but the same Civil Society that the public has been fed unpalatable propaganda (especially misinformed) about is the same one that believes in the Kenyan people and, despite the mass failure in electing these political incompetents, it will still seek legal redress in a quest to stop the bill by parliament from being enacted to grant them inflated salaries once it becomes law (if it will.) My last call is to the president of the republic of Kenya (the country feels headless though) and his deputy is to put their words of ‘public service first’ against their MPs who constitute their government and ‘opposition’ (do we have any? All are united in greed) into action and not just using them to appease the public or for PR. We are tired of a Chief Executive and his assistant who are just toothless bull dogs and aren’t doing anything to correct the situation waiting until it exacerbates. However, I then remember that they are also in office by dubious means (tribal tyranny of numbers) and this makes me conclude with the Bob Marley slogan as a message to Kenyans: GET UP! STAND UP! STAND UP FOR YOUR RIGHTS…DON’T GIVE UP THE FIGHT!! epikkenyan.wordpress/2013/05/29/the-kenyan-civil-society-the-greed-of-11th-parliament/
Posted on: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 12:19:49 +0000
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