Bunge Towers, that beautiful new office block built to cater for the extravagant expectations of our parliamentarians is a fine addition to the Nairobi skyline.
And I look forward to hearing from journalists from various neighbouring countries – as and when there is a conference which brings them here – just how impressed they are by the fact that each time they return to Nairobi, there is yet another new magnificent building in the CBD.
What many Kenyans see a waste of taxpayers’ money, visitors from neighbouring countries will often consider to be enviable indicators of material progress.
But all this also poses this question: since plainly there is no group of Kenyans who have it so good as the MPs, with their princely salaries and allowances; their giant SUVs and drivers and bodyguards; and now fine offices which would not be out of place in the capital city of some European country: with all this at stake in every election, how then do about 70 per cent of them end up losing their seats with each election cycle?
If Parliament were a private sector institution, those top corporate officers who had similar privileges as MPs (generous salaries and comprehensive health insurance; low-interest mortgages) would be some of the hardest working Kenyans. They would stop at nothing to keep their jobs. And we most certainly would not see 70 per cent of them sent packing after just five years.
Now I am sure that there are many readers out there who are far more qualified than I am to explain this phenomenon. But all the same let me offer my own assessment.
To my mind, being an MP is like serving in an organisation where you must be interviewed every five years by a separate set of interviewers and with completely different terms of reference applying. So really whatever made you successful in the previous interview may not be relevant at all to the interview you will face five years later.
There was a time here in Kenya when a headteacher who became famous for the excellent results posted by the school he or she served in, had a pretty good chance of being elected MP without having to spend any money to speak of, or even having to campaign very hard. The voters would have already seen what this headteacher was capable of: and all they asked was that he or she continue the excellent work and improve the educational standards of the entire constituency.
Alternatively, the candidate might be a person who was once a top officer of a government institution who had somehow managed to get large numbers of boys and girls from his rural backyard employed in that very place.
Here, little thought would be given to the fact that once out of that institution, the constituency’s favourite son or daughter would no longer have the capacity to dish out jobs. Voters would say that the candidate had established a firm reputation for being mindful of the needs of ordinary people. And they would vote for him or her, believing that they had every reason to expect yet more benefits from this civic-minded technocrat.
But five years later – and at most after 10 years – that very candidate would face a totally different (and potentially hostile) electorate. People who had no favourable memory of his past good deeds. And who had no reason to trust in his goodwill.
As such, unless the candidate had managed to somehow reinvent himself and was able to present their candidature under a different narrative, chances are a newcomer would have no difficulty persuading the electorate that it was high time a better and more capable MP was elected.
Why do I say this?
Well, every time I have met someone who was from a constituency previously represented by a politician I knew well and have asked why the locals had rejected my friend, the answer has always been the same: “He did not do anything for us. He was just enjoying life in Nairobi.”