Our MPs don’t win, but Kenyans still lose

Posted Thursday, July 22 2010 at 17:29

The upshot of the secret talks between the Executive and the Legislature as to whether MPs should get the huge salary increments they are demanding is that they won’t get an extra cent.

But then they do not get to pay tax on their emoluments either.

In short, it was more a compromise borne out of necessity than an accommodation, but the fact that the status quo remains is not likely to mollify the angry, taxpaying public who will still consider themselves ripped off by their political leaders.

This matter of grossly enhanced pay for MPs has been exercising the minds of Kenyans for some time now, and the verdict has been uniform: The demand is grossly unfair, in fact obscene, in the light of the country’s indigence.

In any case, it wouldn’t make sense for people who have been resisting paying tax to demand such mind-boggling sums in a country where 60 per cent of the population lives on less than Sh70 a day.

We are a dirt-poor country which is at the same time one of the most unequal societies on earth.

It so happens that the legislators have been leaning rather heavily on legalisms -- that they are merely following the recommendations of the Akiwumi Tribunal Report – but the report also insists that the 10th Parliament cannot vote for itself any increments.

Whatever they do, the implementation period begins in the 11th Parliament -- after 2012. That is the simple message that Kenyans can understand.

It is the message delivered by Finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta and by President Kibaki himself, on Thursday – that the country does not have the money to pay MPs those astronomical sums they intend to vote for themselves, and that even if they did, it would only apply to the next crop of self-seekers two