Senators dishonest on latest push for more counties' cash

Marginalised areas. That phrase has gained currency in Kenya recently since the Senate started haggling over revenue allocation to counties, with every other senator saying their communities are disadvantaged and should not be overlooked.

Haggling is the operative word because the caterwauling that goes on in the Senate does not qualify as a debate. So far, the bleating has produced more heat than light, and the retreat meant to iron out the issues at hand has become a damp squib — and escalated to an atrocity now that governors have threatened to shut down county offices and stop offering services to residents for lack of funds.

Ever since the Senate started amending the revenue sharing formula from the Commission on Revenue Allocation, senators have just been shouting at each other about how marginalised their communities are, and how they will remain so if they are not allocated certain amounts.

This is not new. Not the marginalisation. The talk about marginalised communities. It is as old as Kenya, probably older and it has been treated as a badge of honour, a bargaining chip, a campaign tool always unleashed at the hustings to manufacture false promises so as to gain political seats.

Immediately the seat is bagged, all what was said about improving the community’s lot is deliberately forgotten and politicians start cutting deals that only hurt their own people. They care about their stomachs only, eat to their fill and when their food is running out, they start yelling that their communities are hungry, because, well, they have been marginalised.

In all their talk, senators and other politicians who keep harping that their communities are disadvantaged never say why, yet they have been electing representatives every election cycle.

When it comes to marginalisation and inequalities — real or imagined — there is history, geography, culture, and mostly greed or outright theft, daylight robbery committed by politicians and their godfathers and cronies in Parliament, other arms of government and within the Fourth Branch and legal circles.

Thirty or even more years ago, politicians from the areas that experience disparities were promising heaven if elected while singing the same inequalities and marginalisation songs that their younger successors are currently singing.

Yet by then, their local councils and municipalities were collecting hundreds of millions of shillings, probably billions from natural resources in their areas such as community wildlife reserves. Sadly, most if not all of it was being pilfered, and invested in real estate in other parts of the country, and not used to improve social and community amenities and facilities within their communities.

For generations, their stepping stone to power was the promise of uplifting the fortunes of their voters, but when they reached the high table, they put the people’s needs on the back burner as they hobnobbed with fellow liars and gorged themselves on State largesse as villagers starved.

It can be argued that by then, development was considered a favour from the State, but some politicians from these areas were politically-correct, literally, and not only had the ear of State authorities, but direct access to the powers that were.

Thus, they could have had development projects initiated in their areas, but voters were only to be used and discarded, until the next election cycle when they would be read the marginalisation gospel and encouraged to worship poverty.

The politicians of the single party era, and later pre-devolution period, might have left the scene, but they bequeathed their manipulative and thieving mannerisms to these younger ones who are more greedy, and loudest while screaming about disparities and inequalities.

It is easy to blame natural factors like geography and even cultural practices, but there is no problem that cannot be solved with money — proper utilisation of the funds that they have been haggling over, only that the money ends up laundered through real estate and other businesses in urban areas.

Senators and other politicians are good in shouting about corruption, but they are not clean themselves, and then, they do not play their oversight roles effectively to ensure systems are strict and funds reach the intended projects or services they were meant for. Yes, they also want to share the loot, and whenever other suspects come before them, their first assignment is to blackmail them, as it was reported yesterday, and extort money from them, the same money that was supposed to be used to uplift their marginalised communities.

It is a rigmarole of sorts, but it would be good to just call it by its real name: daylight robbery because politicians keep stealing from the people they swore to protect.

Their marginalised communities have become their prey — and the noise about changing their lifestyles for the better, is nothing but an excuse to loot, just as it has been for generations.

- The writer is an editor with The Standard. [email protected]