CITY GIRL: MPs must live up to the high calling of their office
Today, I want to address the Sodom and Gomorrah that is the Parliament of Kenya. The August House is supposed to be the epitome of leadership and integrity. It is meant to be a beacon of hope, a tower of honour and the pride of our democracy.
However, MPs have disgraced the spirit of that hallowed House and have turned it into Kenya’s sin capital, where just about anything and anyone goes.
Given the most recent scandal we were all horrified to witness playing out on national television, I am about to suggest we accept Parliament buildings are no longer the honourable place we once knew it to be, and instead rename it “Kenya’s Playboy Mansion” since all that many of the MPs do there these days is “play”.
I am not surprised our “Waheshimiwas” behave badly. They have never been the moral custodians of society or role models to look up to. They also have never been the sharpest tools in the box or even thinkers of note. So I will not deliver a homily on strange philosophies such as leadership and the need for integrity here.
What surprises me, though, is the mannerlessness of some MPs, the don’t-care attitudes they have adopted, the arrogance with which they carry themselves and the cavalier disregard of some for their honourable positions.
Some Kenyan MPs — to borrow the words of Hillary Clinton — are a basket of deplorables. Some among them cannot even be considered “immoral”.
They are amoral, meaning they are without a trace of morality. They are unashamed of their proclivities and remain insensitive to the consequences of their debauchery.
CONMAN
Having considered this for a long time, I have tried to locate something, anything, good to write about them, but I am afraid that very few have even one soul-redeeming quality.
When some of the male MPs are busy with their child-brides, some of the female MPs are courting professional gigolos young enough to be their sons.
I was not surprised when one of the male escorts masquerading as a driver turned out to be a conman. What did these MPs expect? When you bring in a stray, you will wake up with fleas.
As some of the female MPs continue to take pictures in compromising positions with their toy-boys, some of their male counterparts are siring wild oats.
And they are not averse to airing their dirty linen in public. Their private spats with their spouses have become fodder for city rags and their swindling toyboys are suddenly a matter of national interest.
Don’t even get me started on the houses of ill repute across the road from Parliament, carefully camouflaged as MPs’ offices, where plumbers were unpleasantly surprised to discover that it was used prophylactics that had clogged the system.
DRUNK WITH POWER
Let us not even discuss how some MPs treat the people who work for them, those they consider beneath them. The long and dreary hours their drivers have to endure on empty stomachs as they drive around their bosses. How MPs have converted their drivers into “wingmen”, sending them out on questionable errands.
Or even how a few female MPs have turned their drivers into handbag carriers. There have been accusations that some have turned their secretaries into house helps — forcing them to do menial tasks like shopping for groceries and picking their suits from the dry cleaners.
What’s hurtful and most disrespectful of these leaders is that they simply don’t care. They are far too drunk with power that they think they are invincible and untouchable.
I think it is time for Kenyans to demand more of their MPs. If Kenyans will not demand that MPs be accountable for among other things, public coffers, Kenyans should demand at the very least from MPs, good behaviour.
We have been far too nice to some of them, allowing them to get away with way too much. It is time for us to rise and pack the streets around Parliament Buildings and demand MPs behave like the leaders we elected them to be. We must not go another day tolerating the shenanigans that we see in the august House. This has to stop.
I want to use the words of Karl Marx to challenge my fellow Kenyans to arise and unite against these disgraceful lot.
Workers Unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!