MPs be warned: Revolutions don’t just happen, they evolve

Before the ink had dried on the callous statement by Local Government minister Musalia Mudavadi that any person who can afford to drive a car can afford to pay the Sh140 parking fee, Kenyans now have a Speaker of the National Assembly whose statements have become extremely condescending.

Recently, he was quoted as telling journalists that they are not trained in law, hence they cannot be expected to comprehend simple logic. Then he went on to rub it in by describing paying of taxes as an attack of “sufficiently” philanthropic or charitable instinct.

The world is replete with institutions that, in one way or the other, chose to view the masses as an aberration. They then proceeded to treat the population with such disdain that they would even talk ill of the same masses the way insensitive masters would describe their slave in their presence.

The ruling elite start ignoring the voices of the masses and even mock them. The collective power that this group wields shields them from reality. They move on as if nothing wrong is happening. They become cynical.

They dismiss the cries of the masses in Marie Antoinette’s fashion: “S’ils n’ont plus de pain, qu’ils mangent de la brioche” – “If they have no bread, let them eat cake”. They start seeing themselves as invincible. Anything they say goes. Anything they want, they get.

The masses in this country spoke loudly and clearly even before the elections, saying the salaries of MPs needed to be reduced. Any MP that walked into the 10th Parliament knows this very well. Indeed, some even signed a paper pledging to reduce the obscene pay.

And the masses have been very clear that the MPs must pay taxes. It does not require a tribunal to say that. It requires the MPs to respect the employer, the tax-paying masses. What are the possibilities of them listening? Very low.

Sometimes back, I wrote about parliamentary dictatorship. I pointed out that while it is much easier and manageable to remove a presidential dictatorship, it is extremely difficult and expensive to roll back parliamentary dictatorship.

What we are all witnessing is the entrenchment of parliamentary dictatorship that started in earnest with the Ninth Parliament, and though the voters removed almost 90 per cent of the members, the institution is slowly growing into a monster.

Quite clearly, while all along we collectively thought the individual members were the problem, the malady is afflicting the institution. This disease could, therefore, be viewed from the power-position perspective. It is cutting across the whole spectrum of leadership where the elite start believing they are invincible.

We should all be worried. For the view taken by the masses that feel disenfranchised is that anyone in a position of authority is a perpetrator of this crime.

It has been said that very few revolutions succeed. This is quite true, and the Animal Farm tale is more for amusement than a reflection of reality.

However, observers of history will tell you that what we have been calling revolutions are actually evolutions. The masses take long to react but the effect is always the same.

Always, there are those who will say the masses were incited by revolutionaries, but the reality is that the elite incite the masses. The so-called revolutionaries are no more than accidents of history.

The riots in Greece are a good example. The youth have become disenfranchised. They have watched as the propertied have enriched themselves while hopelessness has been setting in. The accidental killing of a young man by police was just the excuse they were waiting for.