Do the honourable thing, dear MPs, and pay all your tax

Story by LUCY ORIANG’
Publication Date: 6/20/2008 Daily Nation

Life is bloody unfair, if the standard issue Kenyan MP is to be believed. It is the traditional story of poor little rich kid. Their pay packet reads like the average woman’s idea of heaven on earth.

They are said to earn significantly more than MPs in better-off countries. But to hear them tell it, theirs is a tale of misery.

Why anyone should then fight tooth and nail – literally, sometimes – to get to Parliament is beyond comprehension. A little bird recently told me that some spent as much as Sh30 million for only 5,000 votes in some constituencies.

If you have that kind of loose change, another Sh18 million over five years is hardly something to write home about. Only an idiot would go to such an extent if the end result is a negative pay check.

Children do not eat titles, no matter how high-sounding. Titles do not pay school fees either. Given the violence that attended the last election, it is also safe to assume that no one in their right mind would sponsor maiming, raping and killing orgies just so they can end up living on peanuts.

If those in an uproar over taxation are to be believed, their constituents are a little more than vampires hell-bent on sucking every little drop of cash out of their pockets.

When they see their MPs, they do not picture mortals with needs and responsibilities like everyone else. They see mobile ATMs.

Those cash cows are now bristling at the notion that they should give to Caesar everything that belongs to him. In a land where conspiracy theories abound, MP Bonny Khalwale’s heartfelt protest will go down in the annals of history, much like Marie Antoinette’s if-they-don’t-have-bread-let-them-eat-cake.

In the heat of the moment during debate on Wednesday, he asked: “Do they want to make us as miserable as our constituents?” It is to be hoped  the people of Ikolomani heard it, loud and clear.

Let us take a quick look at what our dearly beloved leaders are entitled to: We give them some Sh3 million to buy cars duty-free, Sh75,000 in car allowance, and Sh366,000 to ensure their fuel-guzzlers remain on the road. They also get drivers and bodyguards.

We give them Sh8 million in housing loans each term at an interest rate of a mere three per cent and a house allowance of Sh70,000 to ease their mortgage burden.

There is a constituency allowance of Sh50,000. Their total allowances come to Sh651,000 out of a package that works out to Sh851,000 every month. There is even an extraneous allowance of Sh30,000, whatever that means.

That they should pay tax on only Sh200,000 is an outrage in a country where hardworking citizens pay up to 30 per cent of their income in tax and 56 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line.