Gathoni wa Muchomba’s pay hike call should not have surprised Kiambu

When the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) dislodged Kanu party from power after 24 years in 2002 under the leadership of Mwai Kibaki, there were celebrations and joy across the country.

President Daniel arap Moi, who had sponsored Uhuru Kenyatta to run for the presidency on the nationalist Kanu party, had been defeated.

The country looked forward to a new chapter. There was renewed hope in the air, or so people thought. Yet, in politics, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

One month after the new MPs were sworn in, they immediately started agitating for increased perks and salaries. Kenyans were shocked. Then angry.

Then it dawned on them they were helpless in stopping the MPs from awarding themselves hefty emoluments.

One of the MPs leading the agitation was a newly crowned legislator who had excellent reform credentials. In the 1990s, he had led a sustained onslaught on President Moi’s dictatorial and monolithic politics.

Come 2002, his constituents rewarded him by electing him to the National Assembly. Once in Parliament, he shocked every Kenyan sensibility by demanding to be paid well.

He talked of having spent (enough) money on his campaigns and therefore needing to be respected by being paid well. Rings a bell? Does it? With some of our recently elected MPs?

Because the politician is still very much around, his name will remain undisclosed.

Oblivious of the peoples’ outcry, the MPs went ahead to increase their salaries. In the coming months, I wrote a story on the comparative pay packages of legislators in East Africa, South Africa and the United States.

Back then, I had a friend who was a congressman representing a district in Illinois, USA, and I emailed him to ask him how much he earned and to tabulate for me his peers’ earnings. He did.

From my sources in South Africa, I got the figures of how much a South Africa MP earned. Likewise from Tanzania and Uganda.

What I gleaned, then, as now, was that the Kenyan MP was shamelessly earning a lot more than his equivalent in East Africa, South Africa and even USA.

TWISTED LOGIC

My congressman friend who was a member of the House of Representatives – the equivalent of an MP in Kenya, was equivocal that in the US, a politician would never dare suggest to increase his pay, least of all grumble that it could be inadequate.

He, therefore, did not have the powers to decide or even fix his remuneration. But the one most important thing he told me was that politicians’ pay must be supported by the economies of the respective states’ public coffers.

“Politicians are greedy all over the world, including the US,” the Congressman told me. “But in the US, most people who choose to join the public service hardly do it for self-aggrandisement – usually they have made their money outside of politics.”

The next time I met my Kenyan MP friend, he was very cross with me. “Dauti, why did you write that story? Why are you making us look greedy? Do you know how much I spent to get elected? We must be paid good money commensurate with our stature.”

Is there any difference, across 15 years, between my MP friend and Gathoni wa Muchomba – the newly minted Kiambu County Women Representative on her twisted logic of demanding a pay hike?

Without belabouring Gathoni’s rationale for a review of MPs’ salaries, she said, among other things, she wanted to be appreciated and honoured and reminded all and sundry that she had spent her own money to capture the County Women Representative seat.

How much money would be enough to honour her? Is money the only way to appreciate her?

Upon talking to her supporter who had just voted for her in the August 8, 2017 elections, he mused aloud: “Gathoni is telling us she used her money – who asked her to use her own money and who did she give her money to? Now that she has told us she used her money – what does she want – compensation?”

RIPE BANANAS

In the lead up to the 2007 general elections, I happened to be in the company of two politicians, a sitting MP and an aspiring one who was looking to joining the August House for the first time.

Dropping his guard and consumed with the animated conversation, the MP from Central Kenya told his friend from Western Kenya: “Make sure you are elected to Parliament. In Kenya today, politics is the best business – it has the greatest maximum returns, with the lowest minimum effort.”

“And if you are lucky, and you are awarded with a membership of a committee job in the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), you make even more money. You are assured of getting allowances, travelling around the world – all paid for. Remember, we are the only people who fix our salaries. And we know how to do these things.”

Gathoni should be congratulated for being forthright with her intentions of going to Parliament. “She may have apologised – after the undue pressure from the Kiambu voter – but what about her intentions? Have they suddenly gone away? Posed her voter. “She has not even been sworn in, and here she is asking for more money.”

Gathoni, Gladys Wanga, Gathoni’s counterpart in Homa Bay County and my MP friend and indeed all those other politicians who have been elected or re-elected are cut from the same cloth. They primarily think of three things only: me, myself and I.

I cannot remember who said it – that politicians are like ripe bananas; they are all yellow, crooked and bend towards the same direction.

Gathoni and Gladys Inc. are not an oddity. It is the rule rather than the exception among our politicians. I knew Gathoni in 2000, when she was just about to get started at Kameme FM and was learning the ropes about broadcast journalism. She was a greenhorn.

DEMONISING RAILA

What was Gathoni’s agenda for wanting to be a Kiambu Women Representative? She spent the better part of 2017 hurling invective at Raila Odinga, the leader of the opposition National Super Alliance (Nasa) coalition.

On account of her throwing brickbats at Raila on vernacular Kikuyu radio, she won accolades from the Kiambu County voter and was voted by one of the largest margins ever of a county representative, garnering 992,829 votes.

Why is the Kiambu voter now pretending to boil over with anger at her unbridled brevity in asking to be paid more than the president of a middle-sized company?

Other than applauding her for demonising Raila on live radio, did the Kiambu voter stop to ask her how she would uplift the lot of the poor Kiambu woman voter? Did he or she interrogate her agenda for seeking the public office?

The last weekend of September 2–3, Gathoni was booed at a rally in Githurai. Kiambu County voters may have had their day that weekend, but I can assure them, and indeed the entire Kenyan electorate, that they have yet to hear the last word on the controversial issue of MPs' maddening craving to award themselves hefty salaries, to the chagrin of the people who elected them.

Twitter: @KahuraDauti