The Parliamentary pay fiasco is a stark reminder of how out of touch Kenya’s political classes can be with the needs of the general public, the wananchi. Corporate CEOs may get “plus ups” in their compensation packages to pay for their taxes, but the notion that MPs in Kenya should be taxed fully on their compensation only if they get more pay, so as to make more than Members of Congress in the U.S. or almost any other legislators in the world, is guaranteed to be offensive to most Kenyans.

While Parliament as an institution does seem to have been making progress in its functioning, but it still has a long way to go. As I have written before, one of the problems is that there are a fair number of MPs who likely did not legitimately win their elections based on the problems shown by the Kreigler Report looking at the last election. And many of the people in the previous Parliament that had a record of serious public service and support for reform were defeated for re-election, in many cases at the party primary level.

We have heard rumors and discussion of bribery issues in parliament irrespective of the high pay–what are Kenyan taxpayers getting for their money?

A positive aspect to this is that it may help unite those who are frustrated by poor governance and selfishness by the political classes. The momentum from protesting this foolishness may help pass the constitutional referendum by prioritizing voters attention on the many positive aspects of the draft constitution instead of on the “contentious provisions” that have seemed to be attracting disproportionate energy.

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• Kenya MPs vote in favour of pay rise (bbc.co.uk)
• Pig protest over Kenyan MPs’ pay (bbc.co.uk)
• Case against MPs pay hike sent to CJ for direction (capitalfm.co.ke)