Yes, we do not need all these MPs and MCAs, get rid of them!

Do you know your local MCA? What has he done for you lately? Maybe that’s being too ambitious, so let me revise it: what has he done for you since he was elected?

For most Kenyans, the answers to all these questions feature squarely in the negative zone. Now, consider that your MCA will cost you an additional Sh12.5 billion shillings this year, because that is how much is expected to come out of the government purse to keep members of county assemblies and county executives comfortable.

It will pay for their salaries, their allowances as well as all manner of other made-up luxuries and unnecessary “benchmarking” trips abroad.

It will also give your MCA a ward office with staff ranging from four to 10, as the spirit may lead. It’s a jungle out there, seeing as somebody forgot to issue official guidelines on these perks.

“The MCAs’ position has become a tool for political exploitation and blackmail, especially when their interests are at stake,” warned Peter Aling’o and David W. Wagacha of the Institute of Security Studies at the beginning of the year.

BIGGEST THREAT

“MCAs pose the biggest threat to Kenya’s ‘noble’ constitutional devolution project, and intervention is urgently required to ensure that the popular will of the people — devolution — is not subverted to serve the interests of a few political elites.”

Their commentary couldn’t be more appropriately titled "The Tyranny of Kenya’s MCAs".

Even though they earn “modest salaries” of Sh123,750 a month, that has not stopped them from abusing the system to make much, much more.

Though the Salaries and Remuneration Commission set a ceiling of Sh124,000 for monthly allowances, they have treated it purely as a suggestion, and some are making as much as Sh500,000 a month — almost as much as MPs — according to Controller of Budget Agnes Odhiambo.

Take the great county of Uasin Gishu, for instance, where “honourable” MCAs make an average of Sh313,339 a month, almost double what principal magistrates make.

That MCAs are a general nuisance at home is no longer in doubt, but they are spreading their unique brand of irritation abroad as well. At least eight countries have banned them from visiting, rightfully concluding that the trips achieved nothing for either parties.

But you know who perfected the fine art of beating the system? MPs, of course! In the last financial year, they consumed Sh3 billion travelling locally and internationally.

Kenyans seem to have settled into the comfortable cycle of picking the worst behaved, least upright loudmouths, sending them to Parliament and installing the misleading title of “Honourable” upon them.

When you scrape the bottom of the barrel for your leaders, they don’t disappoint. In 2013, the long-suffering citizens of Kenya ended up with 349 members of the national assembly and another 67 in the Senate.

Before this new class arrived in Nairobi, budget estimates in 2012 told us the new set-up would cost us Sh18.1 billion in the first year. The actual costs were likely higher for almost no returns.

Are we better represented than we were before we adopted this new Constitution? No, Kenyans are just the poorer for it, both in monetary and leadership terms.

DISASTER IN WAITING

Why do we need 2,526 MCAs yet they are just the same glorified councillors of yore? Do you sleep better knowing that there are 2,944 people who represent your interests?

This whole layered system of representation that the Constitution gave us has been an expensive experiment and it is time we abandoned it. We should have opted for fewer elected and nominated representatives, not more. The country’s trifling economy can’t afford it and two years have proved that the extra leaders are a bigger liability than we could have imagined.

The friction between the national and county governments, the decentralised corruption and the all-too-many “threats to devolution” have proven this system an unmitigated disaster.

I’m all for devolution, but at a manageable, cost-effective scale. We would all get by just fine with about 100 MPs, 400 MCAs and 20 governors. Instead, we have this broken monstrosity of a government that is akin to pouring money into a bottomless pit.

Is anybody listening?

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Dreams are valid, indeed

Who wears a dress worth nearly Sh14 million? Lupita Nyong’o, apparently.

She wore it to the Oscars with all its pearls, and she made it look good. But a few days later, the Calvin Klein creation was reported stolen from the London West Hollywood Hotel.

All the police and the world had to wait was another day or two before the thief returned it. The pearls turned out to be fake, the thief allegedly told the hotel when he dropped it off nearby.

I watched all the news around it with amazement; Lupita had come from that gutsy actress in 'Shuga' to a boldface global name in one instant.

Amondi Nyaseme (daughter of Seme) has become the sort of person who wears a Sh14 million dress, smiles for the cameras and presents the first category at the Academy Awards.

All dreams are valid, indeed.

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Airtel wakes up. Will it work this time?

At the beginning of the last decade, the mobile phone company Kencell had these fancy pink-themed commercials touting their per-minute billing.

Anybody who had a 073 prefix was automatically assumed to be rich. Safaricom, on the other hand, went with per-second billing, using patriotic Kenyan landscapes in its advertising.

Who won the hearts and minds of Kenyans is now well known and is not a story worth revisiting. As its owners changed, Kencell soon morphed into Celtel then Zain and into its latest iteration, Airtel.

Safaricom became a cultural phenomenon while Airtel was relegated to an also-ran. Even after more price wars than anybody can remember, the subscribers just did not come.

In fact, the entire industry remained loss-making, apart from the consistently over-performing Safaricom.

If Airtel’s new UnlimiNET product does not work, probably nothing ever will. Offering mostly young subscribers unlimited talk, text and voice — with some terms and conditions thrown in — sure sounds like a game changer.

If Safaricom did something similar, it would be untenable.

The early signs show that people are biting, but will they just turn on, tune in and drop out?

FEEDBACK:

On my argument that Tanzania was misadvised to banish English from education system, and the hot topic of digital TV migration

WRONG ON KISWAHILI:

Larry, I was shocked at your views towards Tanzania’s language policy as every nation should develop its languages and culture. No nation has ever made great strides in a foreign language.

Tanzania is on the right path while Kenya has a misguided language policy. Our official languages are Kiswahili and English, but Kiswahili does not get prominence.

Look at the highly developed Scandinavian countries that use their languages — Danish in Denmark and Swedish in Sweden — look at how advanced Japan is while using Japanese. In all these countries children are taught English as a second language if they wish, and mostly speak English with an accent, yet in Kenya it is funny to speak English with an accent.

What will surprise you, Larry, is that native speakers of English still find your accent funny and odd (I have listened to you on TV).

Yes, let’s learn and use English, but let’s also develop Kiswahili and other native languages as well. Sheng is spreading so fast because most Kenyans are not comfortable with the English language.

Public services — health care at the grassroots and agricultural extension programmers, for instance — are mostly delivered in Kiswahili and other local languages.

Why do leaders address rallies mostly in Kiswahili?

What language should be used in lower courts, and why? George Ooko

LANGUAGE OF COHESION:

Larry, please help Kiswahili grow instead of bashing it. It is spoken and taught worldwide, from Brazil to Hong Kong to America to Japan to Germany and China, and is among the fastest growing languages.

Closer home, Kiswahili is one of the official languages of the African Union. Also, I’m told Germany, Japan, Italy, China, India, France and — surprise! surprise! — Tanzania are more cohesive because they use their local languages.

Have a good day, and so sorry I had to write this is English.

Fred Munane

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I WANT MY STATION BACK:

Larry, to begin with, the time to contest over frequency allocation was years ago as digital TV migration didn’t come like a ghost.

Were the TV stations too busy chasing after Kanyari and Co to notice the realignment of the race dynamics yet they are “supposedly” the cream of the crop.

They have been off air for a bit now and life is going on, so who is losing out? If I can’t get news from my favourite station I will look for the next best from what is available.

The notion that there is a deliberate effort to diminish the economic and editorial influence of NTV, KTN, Citizen TV and QTV is vague and looks like a clamour for public support. The public just wants their favourite shows back on air.

It’s time for the regulator to educate the public on which decoders carry free-to-air content and which ones are for subscription.

Things are changing and it’s just a matter of time before we have many local world-class TV stations.

The work is cut out for all home channels as what sets them apart are primarily the local shows, coverage and presentation of news.

For the foreign shows, people can easily get that from other sources who give it best and fresh.

Ian Wainaina

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WAITING FOR ADN:

Larry, I bought a set-top box but I can assure you the carriers lack content. That, at least for me, means that when the Africa Digital Network consortium eventually brings its decoders, I will go for them.

Fight for your space, no matter how long it takes.

Zaccheaus Oonje