Peasant Apartheid!
President Mwai Kibaki has done one of the most unusual things in the life of the current Parliament. He has rejected a pay rise! Watching the news item on Al-Jazeera (English) in England, Kibaki’s rejection didn’t sound epic at all. On the contrary, audiences were captured by its absurdity. Quite concomitant with foreign news values in the now competitive world of rolling news TV, the bizarre from Africa does not make for casual viewing any more. The news item was important and accordingly amplified for its outlandish nature: the President of a third world country had rejected a pay rise that would have made him the world’s highest paid leader! After the predicable praises that have already met Kibaki’s rejection of the new pay, Kenyans need to think hard, for rather than laugh, most of the world will still be commiserating with the Kenyan poor. Far from it, Kibaki’s decision was not a fit of benevolence. To have argued that he made the decision after weighing the ‘pay hike’s implications under the current economic conditions prevailing in the country’, confirms that Kibaki contemplated accepting the rise and it is that very unfortunate fact, that error of judgement that unsettles the mind. As an economist, as the country’s longest serving Finance Minister and as President, did Kibaki not know that more than half of his subjects live on less than a dollar per day? Has he ever given these statistics a human face? Was this supposed reflection on the state of the country’s economy genuine? I am persuaded to think otherwise. Kibaki capitulated to pressure, which is why this script he read from seems multi-layered.
But the criticism should not be limited to the President. Finance Minister Amos Kimunya and Trade and Industry Minister Mukhisa Kituyi among other affluent colleagues chocking in opulence in the August house and who continue to ride on the backs of over-burdened tax payers equally need to be censured. The instinct that informs the culture of primitive consumption, a life they live with aplomb, made them see little sense in the obvious. They argued that the President deserved a higher salary, ostensibly because it was unfair that some public officers earned more that the Head of State. Without any sense of either guilt or shame Kituyi supported the motion allegedly ‘because we must give the institution of the presidency the respect and dignity it deserves, why should chief executive officers and MPs earn more than the President?’ This is scandalous!
Clearly Kituyi and his ilk do not know what it means to be president in a democracy. Evidently, Kituyi’s political mindset isn’t weaned of the policies of Kenya’s first and second republics, where politics and accumulation were brothers of a kind. Elective politics means little when those elected live in the past and think like absolute monarchs.
It would be laughable were it not so serious that according to this obscenely affluent class, decency only comes from accumulation, more aptly put, primitive accumulation. Kituyi and his colleagues need to realise that political leadership does not necessarily confer the rights to this kind of excess. All around the world the private sector pays much more than public offices. There are numerous state bureaucrats who earn much more than presidents in the same countries. South Africa with a GDP larger than Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania combined is a good example. But we did not hear Nelson Mandela complain, nor have we heard Thabo Mbeki’s most ardent supporters whinge. Instead, ‘political bling’ as the authoritative Mail&Guardian calls this politics of excess, is increasingly being frowned upon. This twisted logic about the President having a right to earn more than all government executives is unique to Kenya and now forms part of our ever increasing baggage of shame.
But the motion also confirmed a particularly sad reality; for the political class, poverty can never equate decency even when the use of that word for this class is clearly relative. To argue that a President who earns no less than Sh 2 million a month in Kenya is at the risk of starvation is a serious indictment of those to whom the poor entrust their taxes and their future. It speaks volumes of the emergence of the two economies in Kenya. In fact, it is beginning the take the form of ‘peasant apartheid’ where the poor continue to pay for the luxuries of the political class. This politics of primitive consumption is the bane of this Parliament and the time has certainly come to seek an alternative force to stem this tide of wanton accretion. Kibaki does not deserve any plaudits for refusing the pay hike. We need to criticise him for even thinking about accepting it. Meanwhile, in Kimunya and Kituyi, we are seeing leaders who are clearly not fit for purpose. The very motion asking for the pay hike and the crude reasons advanced as justifications should tell us just who should not be Finance Minister or Trade Minister. These two ‘leaders’ and the cabal that supported this motion ought to bow their heads in shame and apologise to the country. But then again, that would be too much to expect, for in their world waheshimiwa deserve respect not rebuke. It is the poor who must be thankful the President was so kind enough as to shelve this pay hike for future. Many Kenyans have lived through four years of disappointment and their frustrations are certainly on the edge. Still bottled, when they erupt, they will do so untamed and suffice to say, the consequences will be dire.
But the criticism should not be limited to the President. Finance Minister Amos Kimunya and Trade and Industry Minister Mukhisa Kituyi among other affluent colleagues chocking in opulence in the August house and who continue to ride on the backs of over-burdened tax payers equally need to be censured. The instinct that informs the culture of primitive consumption, a life they live with aplomb, made them see little sense in the obvious. They argued that the President deserved a higher salary, ostensibly because it was unfair that some public officers earned more that the Head of State. Without any sense of either guilt or shame Kituyi supported the motion allegedly ‘because we must give the institution of the presidency the respect and dignity it deserves, why should chief executive officers and MPs earn more than the President?’ This is scandalous!
Clearly Kituyi and his ilk do not know what it means to be president in a democracy. Evidently, Kituyi’s political mindset isn’t weaned of the policies of Kenya’s first and second republics, where politics and accumulation were brothers of a kind. Elective politics means little when those elected live in the past and think like absolute monarchs.
It would be laughable were it not so serious that according to this obscenely affluent class, decency only comes from accumulation, more aptly put, primitive accumulation. Kituyi and his colleagues need to realise that political leadership does not necessarily confer the rights to this kind of excess. All around the world the private sector pays much more than public offices. There are numerous state bureaucrats who earn much more than presidents in the same countries. South Africa with a GDP larger than Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania combined is a good example. But we did not hear Nelson Mandela complain, nor have we heard Thabo Mbeki’s most ardent supporters whinge. Instead, ‘political bling’ as the authoritative Mail&Guardian calls this politics of excess, is increasingly being frowned upon. This twisted logic about the President having a right to earn more than all government executives is unique to Kenya and now forms part of our ever increasing baggage of shame.
But the motion also confirmed a particularly sad reality; for the political class, poverty can never equate decency even when the use of that word for this class is clearly relative. To argue that a President who earns no less than Sh 2 million a month in Kenya is at the risk of starvation is a serious indictment of those to whom the poor entrust their taxes and their future. It speaks volumes of the emergence of the two economies in Kenya. In fact, it is beginning the take the form of ‘peasant apartheid’ where the poor continue to pay for the luxuries of the political class. This politics of primitive consumption is the bane of this Parliament and the time has certainly come to seek an alternative force to stem this tide of wanton accretion. Kibaki does not deserve any plaudits for refusing the pay hike. We need to criticise him for even thinking about accepting it. Meanwhile, in Kimunya and Kituyi, we are seeing leaders who are clearly not fit for purpose. The very motion asking for the pay hike and the crude reasons advanced as justifications should tell us just who should not be Finance Minister or Trade Minister. These two ‘leaders’ and the cabal that supported this motion ought to bow their heads in shame and apologise to the country. But then again, that would be too much to expect, for in their world waheshimiwa deserve respect not rebuke. It is the poor who must be thankful the President was so kind enough as to shelve this pay hike for future. Many Kenyans have lived through four years of disappointment and their frustrations are certainly on the edge. Still bottled, when they erupt, they will do so untamed and suffice to say, the consequences will be dire.
posted by Janam at 5:11 AM
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