MPs too special to join queue at Times Tower

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Photo/ FILE Kenya Revenue Authority head office at Times Tower in Nairobi.

By CLAY MUGANDA
Posted  Monday, June 27 2011 at 14:06

IN SUMMARY

Dishonourable lot: If you are a Kenyan MP who does not know what took you to Parliament, if you are a Kenyan MP who has refused to pay tax, you are the vilest, most despicable human being that has ever lived in this country

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How I dislike repeating myself, or saying the same thing over and over again, to the same people.

But it seems it has to be done because you have refused to change — or maybe it is us who have refused to change our ways, and keep insisting that you serve us, not yourselves.

This, if you have not yet realised, is a letter to you, the oft-misunderstood Dishonourable MPs, that group of Kenyans who are so overworked and underpaid.

Yes. I know. I know. I know that I have done this before, under the title MPowering themselves, and I should not have done it again, but circumstances have forced me to come to your aid.

This is an eye opener for me too just as much it is for you. I have now known that I can just pick any piece I wrote three or even five years ago and place it here and it will still make sense; because, save for the date, the situation has not changed.

You may ask why I have not started off with greetings and the mandatory Dear MPigs at the beginning, but this is just in keeping with tradition, your tradition, of never following any laid down procedures or protocol, and always missing the point and starting things in the middle then working your way up to your stomachs, or down to any other parts of your anatomy, depending on which red light street you are or on.

Also, I do not want to add the Pigs suffix to your title the way some Kenyans do on social networking sites, not just because it may imply that you should move to sties yet you reside in bungalows, but because it will be an insult to the animals and lovers of pork — which I should add, together with other food items, is out of the reach of millions of Kenyans, thanks to the tunnel-visioned leaders they elected.

You have to forgive me for that minor transgression, but, I have to admit, I have learnt from the best (you), and that is very much in order because you are the perfect example of development, hard work and resilience.

I should have felicitated you for all that, but I am lost for words. No words can be used to describe what you have done for this country, but I will try.

Just a sec! Ideally, it is more like what you have done to this country, and not for it, but I will let that pass.

First off all, I should have sent you an email, or posted this letter, but I fear that you or your driver and bodyguard might be shot at by your enemies who are legion and who lurk at every corner, on the way to the post office to collect it, so bear with m, and take some time from your busy schedule and read this letter.

As for the emailing bit, I am fully aware that many of you are averse to technology and, by extension, modernity, and that is why you still employ Stone Age tactics, literally, by rallying your followers to throw stones.

Sometimes when you feel they are not doing it well, you join them to ward off your enemies or even to keep away annoying City Council workers.

Kenyans keep saying that you are good-for-nothing sleaze balls who only address individuals and not issues, but I have to say this is because you lack the mental capacity that would allow you to think things through before you act.

You are not wired to see the bigger picture, and things have to be broken down for you so that you understand them. You may not see a forest, but individual trees.

And speaking of forests, you may actually not see them because they are disappearing, and those who try to conserve them can only be enemies of development, your development, because you hived off some of these forests, divided and sub-divided the parcels of land in to smaller portions and sold them off.

I am tempted to say that you are such a maligned lot, for no reason at all, but trust ordinary Kenyans not to see your worth and how much you have done for them, and how hard you work to make their lives better.

Kenyans are such thankless people, and that is why they want you to pay taxes on the measly pay you get for shouting yourselves hoarse while making asses of yourselves before the masses whenever an opportunity presents itself.

Take Parliament, for instance. You can spend hours on end there shouting at each other about inconsequential things like what percentage of you are monosexual, bisexual, trisexual, quadrisexual, transsexual, homosexual or heterosexual. Your sexuality or sexual preference is none of our business.

Ladies and gentlemen, you are a very misunderstood lot. Kenyans have this notion that you are in Parliament to come up with laws that will help all of them, or all of us.

They have not understood that you are in it for yourselves, and that is why when it comes to increasing your salaries and allowances, all of you turn up, but when it is about debating boring issues like health care or education, you remember that you have other businesses to run.

Kenyans have also failed to understand that some of these businesses were put up with the money meant for their constituencies, but which you just diverted and put to better use because they did not know what projects to use it on, or were too busy worrying about where their next meal would come from and had no time to think of projects.

Projects could have eaten into their valuable time, which they could otherwise have spent looking for ways to feed their sorry selves and their families.

Some of them do not even realise that when you do not utilise the CDF money, you are actually killing two birds with one allocation:

You are saving them the time they could have used to think of projects, and you are also saving the government, and by extension the public — the taxpayers — the money that would have gone in to the pockets of your friends, relatives and cronies who you were going to put in charge of building and running down those projects.

You are so thoughtful, and that is why I want to wish you well, and end this letter where it was supposed to start.

If you are a Kenyan MP who does not know what took you to Parliament, if you are a Kenyan MP who has refused to pay tax, you are the vilest, most despicable human being to have lived in this country.

We wish you never existed, and even if you disappeared into thin air, you would not be missed.

If, by some stroke of good luck, you were kidnapped and a ransom was demanded, we would gladly pay the kidnappers the little money we have left after we have paid our taxes... so that they can keep you.