NAIROBI: What we truly think of you often rests undisturbed, at the soft centre of our hearts. It is all right if you want us to fawn before you. You want us to refer to you by sundry honorifics and praise tags. You are Honourable Such and Such, or Your Excellency Somebody Else. It is in order for us to refer to you by such titles, if that makes you happy. In the end, however, my true feelings about you rest deep inside, in my inviolable soul. When I first meet you, I naturally hold you in honour. It is up to you to make me continue holding you in that regard.
If you so desire, and you have the capacity, you could legislate as much as you wish about the fancy titles you want me to refer to you by. And I will, if that is the law. But that does not make you any one those lavish things that you want us to call you. If I don’t feel it in the soft centre of my heart, then it is not there. Your fancied honour is a mere formation of words. Being a Member of Parliament alone does not, for example, make you honourable. Your deportment and overall conduct do.
You may be the kind of person to get enmeshed into a roughhouse in Parliament. Amidst shouting of expletives and unprintable words, you get into your colleague’s trousers. Conversely, somebody else gets into your trousers. You limp out of the House with one shoe, your trousers torn, your boxers exposed, your finger chewed up by a colleague. Or you could be the finger chewer, yourself. You literally pour cold water on your colleagues, because you have reached the end of your thinking capacity. Outside the chamber, you introduce yourself to us as Honourable Somebody. My mother taught us that you don’t tell people, “I am Mister Someone.” You simply state your name and leave it to the world to decorate you, if it so desires.
As far as titles and empty formations of words go, our honourable people are men and women of honour. But that is as far as it goes. If you want to hear the words “Honourable Somebody” from my lips, you will hear them. That does not, however, make you honourable. This whole notion of honourable persons in Africa is a piece of sublime mysticism and nonsense. It is a veritable high sounding nothing. It is within this prism that the National Assembly’s legislation this week to strip Governors of the title of Excellency should be seen. In the end, it really means nothing.
Rome is burning. Nero is singing and playing the lyre of honorifics in Parliament. But do I read sinister mischief in this waste of public time and funds, at a time when there exist many more deserving things to engage us? There is the digital switch off saga, for one. But if this does not fly with you, we have the mystery of the alleged chicken eaters of Nairobi, the stranded children of Mandera and the land thieves of Kenya. There are credible reports that 18 million Kenyans live in the grip of devastating poverty. The cost of living shoots up by hour. There is road carnage everywhere. Gun totters are on free range.
Our National Assembly that operates on the fuel of tyranny of numbers is a huge letdown. The big question about devolution today is the leasing of medical equipment by the national government, on behalf of devolved government. The national government has committed some Sh38 billion over a seven-year period for medical equipment for the counties. In doing this, it did not at any time dialogue with the counties at all. Counties are suddenly landed with Memoranda of Understanding and are getting coerced to sign the dotted line.
But what is Sh38 billion in this context? It means that each county will spend Sh808 million in all on this equipment. Which is essentially fine. But this is until you get to know that some counties have already acquired this equipment on their own – Meru County for example. The picture only gets confounding. When Meru is done with procurement, she will have spent Sh101. 6 million. She will also keep the equipment. Compare this to leasing the same equipment for Sh808 million. While this does not arouse the concern of the National Assembly, the matter of who wears honorifics does.
When you have multiplied the difference between Sh808 million and Sh101.6 million by 47 counties, you can begin appreciating why some people are going around the country telling Kenyans, “We want to give you good medical equipment, but the Governors don’t want.” You must miss people like the late George Anyona who hailed from Kitutu East in his day. Then there was Lawrence Sifuna who served in the 4th and 5th Parliament. This is to say nothing of the late Martin Shikuku Omwana wa Oyondi, at the apogee of his parliamentary career. They would never have allowed this fledgling chicken go unquestioned.
The current Parliament increasingly comes across as a clueless tool in the hands of the Executive. The Executive has encroached on devolved health services and now presumes to secretively do procurement on behalf of the counties, at grossly inflated prices. Do we begin to understand why they don’t want to let funds follow functions in the counties? Do we begin to understand why they have refused to devolve roads while the Constitution is very clear on this? In agriculture, they have refused to let go of fertiliser, claiming that they touch on a strategic area. They have also refused to let go of irrigation. You don’t need to stretch your imagination much to understand why.
More tragic is that the people’s watchdogs in Parliament have become lapdogs in the arms of the Executive. They waste invaluable time, energy and other resources on pouring water on each other and entering into each other’s clothes while Rome burns. When they are done with these fiddles, they move on to massaging their ego with huge honorifics that are in a mismatch with their conduct. We must ask with Lee Iacocca again, where have all the leaders gone?
