MP’s Stashing Cash

I just read this post by a fab friend over at Sukuma Kenya about our MP’s latest “lets feed ourselves first scheme”, which is about ‘the plans of treasury to siphon off billions of shillings out of public coffers into the MP’s retirement kitty.’

Surely, this has come as no surprise to any of us. I mean, ultimately, why do any of these people vie for a seat in parliament anyway ….



“Er, cash of course …. What else is there ?”

“Sorry, helping the country and its people, are you kidding?”

“Don’t be ridiculous now. Those promises of help are just words spoken on campaign trails in order to get elected. Surely, you don’t actually expect me to seriously achieve any of them, do you?”

“Ohhhhh, You Do?”

“Ah, interesting point, I’ll have to have an all expenses trip to the coast with all my other overpaid friends to consult on that one.”

"I'll get back to you............."

All these people take whopping bank loans in order to finance their ‘campaigning’ (– or paying of the people to vote for you.) They know full well that they will be able to pay the money back extremely quickly once they're elected and once they’ve worked out which approved local project that they promised they can siphon the cash off from.

Towards the end of the last parliament when the MP’s panicked on realising they may just be on their way out the door, they rushed themselves through a bill approving each of them a cool 5Million shilling (around US$75,000), handshake on retirement.

It was the one day in the entire 5 years of that parliament sitting that attendance was over 90%! Mmmmm, Funny that!

Now we have a new bunch of fresh faces sitting in the house, it has dawned on them that many of the ‘old faces’ were voted out and the chances are (seeing as most of them are totally unqualified, inexperienced and incompetent to hold such positions in government anyway), they too will be voted out 5 years from now.

So, first things first.

'Best get our retirement fund organized and then we can get on with the trivial thing of running the country.'

'You know siphoning off cash isn’t so easy these days with all those ‘transparency’ chaps looking over your shoulder, and you never know the day they may finally actually catch up with you.'

Rumour has it, that interviews for the vacant post of Executive Director for the Kenya Chapter of Transparency International are currently being conducted and that doesn’t bode well if you’re newly elected and not quite au fait with how to tap as much cash as possible off every project you’re involved in.

Once these MP’s have spent 5 years earning their 800 thousand shillings + (around $12,000 +) per month, you know there’s always going to be that small problem of then being able to sustain themselves in the manner to which they have become accustomed, and you surely can’t expect them to ever accept to being everyday wanainchi like the rest of us ever again.

Face it, they’re now someone don’t you know, and by the way ….

“WHO ARE YOU?”