By Peter Kimani
This is the Budget Speech Finance minister Njeru Githae should have read in Parliament yesterday:
Mr Speaker Sir, I would like to start with a confession. As you might be aware, I’m a greenhorn in the field of finance, having only arrived on the scene a few months ago. You may have read my plea in the Press seeking a three-month grace period, during which time I expected to fully attune myself to the rules of the game.
Mr Speaker Sir, that was hardly granted, although I’m not complaining. But I would be lying if I told you I fully understand the complexity of budget making, or even the big words that describe the small acts that all amount to taxation of the citizens to fund Government projects.
My expertise and which I would like to draw from lies in the realm of sage philosophy, largely informed by my observations growing up on the slopes of Mount Kenya.
Once upon not too long ago, I proposed that starving Kenyans should turn to eating other foods to be found within their borders, including rats and other four-legged rodents.
This proposal was largely vilified, and even widely quoted as evidence of the alleged dissonance between the political class and Kenya’s growing underclass. Mr Speaker Sir, I want to restate here and now that the indigenous foods proposal should be treated with the seriousness it deserves. As a matter of fact, I want to propose that we make Kenya a tax haven and raise our funds through other means.
Dinner table
Rather than continually provide agricultural farm subsidies that yield nothing other than the bitter fruits of frustration, I propose that my ministry, in conjunction with the Ministry of Wildlife, provide bows and arrows for localised hunting as a long-term food security strategy.
This back-to-the roots campaign shall not end with the issues of bread and butter, I mean, rodents and rats. Wild animals should not stop at the dinner table. They should provide hides and skins to cover the nakedness of our growing population.
Mr Speaker Sir, before anyone thinks this a preposterous proposition, I would like to elaborate such egalitarianism will help us sort permanently the runaway corruption that has dogged successive Governments since independence.
Men, and invariably, women, steal from the public coffers to afford the trappings of privilege such as silk ties and imported suits. By reverting to wearing animal skins, theft of public resources will be partially addressed – without any budgetary implications on the Government. Moreover, the consumption of free-range meat from the bush will dramatically reduce lifestyle diseases that account for a sizeable portion of the financial allocations to the Ministry of Health.
