Greed or common sense

The attempt by members of the Kenyan Parliament to have their salaries increased has created a furor among Kenyans. The Prime Minister himself weighed in on the matter castigating MP’s for their perceived greed arguing that the country could ill afford to sustain the obscene amounts the (dis)honorable members wanted. My question however is; should we really be demonizing the MP’s? How many people on the planet get to write their own performance contracts, decide their own terms of service and write their own pay slips without any external input? Our MP’s belong to that group of people. Frankly, I don’t think anyone given chance would act any different, humans are naturally greedy. The real problem here, if you ask me, is Kenyans themselves, you and I included. We are squarely responsible for this mess.
The average Kenyan is very complacent and will take anything thrown at them without complaining. They silently shoulder the burden given to them by the greed and corruption of society and never once complain. Our “leaders” being Kenyan have observed this about us, they are not exactly stupid, you know. These so called leaders have experimented and found out that they can get away with near everything if they are dealing with Kenyans. How many people went out to complain about the Grand Regency deal, how many even cared about the murder of Chrispin Mbai, how many even remember the 9.2 billion shilling “typing error”? Our MP’s have noticed this about us and know that they can award themselves any amount of money and we will pay for it with our taxes without once complaining. Don’t blame them, blame yourself.
Kenya isn’t the only country whose representatives decide how much they earn, it happens in the US too. The difference however is that for new salaries of elected representatives to come into effect, a general election must punctuate it. This means that for you to want to raise your salary, you have to be sure you would be re elected and the only way you can be sure is if you’ve been delivering good service to your electorate. The problem in this country therefore is weak legislation, after all, if there was no law illegalizing murder, I know quite a few people I would have killed. The solution to this is to create laws to ensure an independent body reviews upwards or downwards the salaries of MP’s or to have proper measures to check their greed if we want them to continue deciding their own salaries.
Until the day we as Kenyans will learn to unite for meaningful causes, we will still be taken for rides by the people we elect to office. In the not so distant past, one Amos Kimunya was involved in a questionable deal. When he was put to task over it, he ran to his home and rallied his tribesmen around him claiming he was being hounded out of office for belonging to that tribe. His tribesmen came out to support him, at least the not so smart ones did. What did we do as Kenyans? We watched with amusement and then went on with our businesses. That story died down and Kimunya is now back in the cabinet. We are known to unite over very stupid issues and let the real ones pass; tribal affiliation, neighborhoods and geographical regions. However, when MP’s unilaterally increase their salaries, only a handful come out in protest and this too lasts only a day or so. Why can’t we instigate mass civil disobedience? Let’s refuse to go to work, let’s paralyze the government, let’s organize a million man march on parliament and pee on the lawns of state house… let’s do something to wake these gluttons from their dream. Let us unite for something that will benefit the country.
They say education is a good thing and sadly, we don’t get enough of it in this country to make sensible people and our society is plagued by general stupidity. The church claim to be fighting for you and I but are they really doing that? In the campaigns against the draft constitution, they have teamed up with some unlikely fellows; Moi, Jirongo, Ruto… the very people that plundered the resources of our nation. Similarly, a lot of Kenyans still come out in large numbers to attend rallies addressed by Moi, braving rain and shine to listen to the man the Kroll report says stole at least 131 billion shillings in the time he was president; if this isn’t stupidity, tell me, what is? Our people need education, our people need enlightenment. If this trend continues, then we are a doomed nation.
What we need is a revolution, not of guns, but of ideas. We need new beliefs, new ideas, new laws. We don’t have to take this senseless thievery by our own employees. Let us take back what belongs to us; the powers to make decisions for ourselves, after all, how can 220 men and women hold ransom a country of 40 million? Let us vote in a new constitution and put to check these wolves because if we don’t, look towards Haiti and see our future.