If poverty had a face, it would not be that of any Kenyan MP

You’ve all heard the news: Our Members of Parliament have threatened fire and brimstone if their employer will not give them additional luxurious perks every month. They claim their current allowances are lower than a grave, despite evidence that they’ve been living larger than a whale in a test tube.

Kenyans are hearing for the first time that their MPs have been sleeping in backwater lodgings every time they are in the city on parliamentary duties. The MPs claim the only accommodation they can afford while in Nairobi are found in dimly-lit alleyways not even fit for forsaken sewer rats. We are learning that they’ve been sleeping in squeaky beds made of rusty metal that last saw paint during the 1896 Battle of Adowa. It seems every night, they have to battle bedbugs bigger than PLO Lumumba’s English dictionary.

You may be tempted to laugh at this unashamed show of human cruelty, but please remember comedy shows aren’t free in Kenya and we don’t want our MPs billing us for cracking us up with their satire.

Meanwhile, you may need to consult an eye specialist to see the truth in these tales coming from the august House. It is common knowledge that if poverty had a face, it wouldn’t be that of a Kenyan MP belching in the airport’s VIP lounge as they wait to travel business class to go play in the snow, and send us the bill. If those designer suits our MPs wear to work are for poor people, then where shall we categorise those barefoot village children wearing torn clothes to school on an empty stomach? If the gold chains and diamond wrist watches I see displayed in Parliament are for the dregs of society, how would you describe a village goat-herder wearing a sweaty sisal rope around his neck?

Just the other day, our MPs were discussing the handbag of one of their colleagues inside Parliament. You’d have thought she had smuggled those little vermin you get from sleeping in those dingy places they claim to squat in. When the bag was summoned for cross-examination, it looked nothing like poverty for it bore the original label of that century-old fashion house in Paris with a name you can only pronounce with a blocked nose.

If MPs are checking into sleazy downtown lodgings with designer bags from high-end international fashion stores, then there is something wrong with their priorities. You have money to buy a bag the price of a new pancreas but you don’t have money to pay for decent accommodation while discharging your duties in Nairobi? It seems to me Kenyan MPs and common sense are like Oscar Sudi and decorum — they will never be friends.

The sad part is that there are MPs who knocked on our doors during the last campaigns, promising they would keep track of every public coin and run greedy hyenas out of town. They cried for our votes, swearing in the name of their ancestors that they would put our interests in front and their stomachs behind. We cancelled wedding plans, yanked off ventilator tubes in ICU beds, dragged terminally ill patients out of the house, even roared dead jalopies back to life, just to turn up at the polling station for these young MPs who were so desperate for our votes their puppy eyes were more innocent than a Kinangop lamb being escorted to the market.

But where are those young progressive MPs now? One is running his mouth faster than Eliud Kipchoge, vomiting xenophobic content more toxic than polonium juice. He once went for a rally in a market in his constituency and asked for a microphone to address the crowd, upon which someone reminded him that even Jesus did not need a microphone to address the five thousand people he had fed. The MP did not need to consult an opinion pollster for his approval rating afterwards.

Then there’s this young MP last seen around State House smiling at the glittering car keys the President had gifted him – he was smiling so hard one would have thought he had just been appointed an influencer for a toothpaste brand. Late last year, the same MP was charged in a Meru court with obstruction of justice and ordered to keep away from his constituency for two weeks after engaging in a lawless act that included blocking police officers from arresting those who had violated the law. If this script reads like a high school gang leader being given a suspension letter by the school principal, it is because this young MP still has the KCSE certificate as his highest academic achievement.

Otherwise there’s nothing motivational to write home about the remaining young MPs, other than to take notice of their camping in the Deputy President’s pocket better than a luxury tent. They should just be declared the brand ambassadors of turncoats and have the Kenya Wildlife Service use their faces on billboards advertising the images of the newest snake species in our forests.