Singing MPs have auctioned little dignity we had as nation

Wanyonyi WambilyangaOn Wednesday I spoke to my old man and he was on his way to buy maize seed for planting. He did not succeed. He was told there are no seeds and he will have to check again with the retailer on Monday.
He is hoping he won’t be sent back empty-handed and like any farmer if by April you have not planted then despair would be your mate until harvest time. As farmers are racking their heads on where they can get the all-important commodity I was bemused by a group of MPs croaking at The Hague in the name of singing.
They sang Kenya nchi yetu ina amani (there is peace in Kenya) but the lines they forgot to insert is that famine is looming large, rains are erratic and no one seems to know when the seeds would be availed.
The MPs, instead of finding a solution to this imminent crisis, are making fools of themselves at The Hague.
Indeed, they looked silly in front of the Dutch who may have seen them do that and they looked even sillier to ordinary Kenyans who have to buy food at exorbitant rates, who are unsure of whether the Constitution would ever be implemented as scheduled, who, in the words of Samuel Beckett, give birth astride a grave.
Isn’t it a betrayal of the Kenyan ethos for MPs to go to the Netherlands and peep through windows to watch a judge read charges to those suspected to bear the greatest responsibility for violence that almost pushed the entire nation to the abyss?
Why can’t these MPs show similar solidarity when Kenyans die of hunger, when they are forced to pay through the nose for a simple meal or vital services as healthcare?
Why is it that the Special Programmes Minister would prefer to call innocent Kenyans living in displaced people’s camps hawkers, and the 58-year-old mother would readily shed her clothes for the suspects?
Even if the suspects are wrongly accused, isn’t the country facing more problems that warrants the attention of these leaders?
These MPs do not know that they bastardised the country’s sovereignty by not instituting credible reforms so that credible investigations could be done and the suspects tried locally.
They are now auctioning the little dignity that we have by adorning the country’s colours and displaying their egotistical, and of course monetary, interests to the whole world.
The MPs who stood in front of cameras and sang have betrayed what we stand for as a country. They have exposed Kenya to global ridicule. They are now planning to storm Uhuru Park on Monday and claim they went to The Hague and now they are back to form a party, and ask voters to vote for them to a man. They want to coalesce under one umbrella hoping to prove to voters that they represent the best interests of wananchi.
From the display at The Hague, it will matter little that the country has a new Constitution because all they will need to do is sing and threaten to strip and in comes their myopic interests, and out goes what the nation stands for.
What a disgrace! And they did not even know the words to the song.
The writer is Chief Sub-Editor, Weekend Editions