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KENDO: Tunnel survival plot for marooned MPs

On a typical day, an MP’s mobile telephone handset records about 120 missed calls and 73 ‘Please Call Me Thank You’ messages.

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by The Star

Columnists23 April 2024 - 16:57
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In Summary


  • The additional cost of Bunge Towers covers Sh150,000,000 tunnels for vehicles and pedestrians.
  • The five-meter wide and 120m tunnels are intended to ‘protect’ MPs and senators from their constituents and ‘bothersome’ mobs. 

MPs need more than a tunnel between Parliament Buildings and Bunge Towers to evade the onslaught of their favour-seeking constituents. The elected ones need a hibernation bunker in Shakahola or Kaya Bombo to buy time, and recoup cash, for 2027 season of handouts.

The season of mandatory handouts is approaching, amidst dwindling opportunities for disposable cash. Times are hard for most people, but the post-2022 general election era is harsher for the people’s automated mobile money dispensers.

Unless one listens to the personal testimonies of average MPs, observers may be tempted to think of the elected representatives of the people as selfish. Some of them may be, but many are beleaguered by choice.

The MPs willingly presented themselves for election to public offices. For as long as they are in office, their constituents feel they have legitimate claims to present their individual or community concerns to the person they elected.

The people now even have a way of testing the ripeness of one they would milk dry. Readiness to lie and shake the fruits down to the voter are key signs of a potential mobile cash dispenser.

A meeting with a mheshimiwa at a coffee house at a discreet location in Kilimani, away from the preying and prying eyes of the central business district crowds, confirmed what is common knowledge about the other side of representative politics.

On a typical day, this MP’s mobile telephone handset records about 120 missed calls, 73 ‘Please Call Me Thank You’ messages, 65 requests for reverse calls, 80 small text messages, 48 WhatsApps messages, and 55 missed WhatsApp calls.

Some desperate constituents message the MP through the Messenger application. Some take even three of these routes to try to reach the MP. Time of calling or messaging the MP, day or night, is not a barrier.

There are also calls the MP may decide to answer personally, or through an aide. Picked calls may be as many as 50 a day, especially from people MPs refer to as their pegs.

Returned calls or replied messages average 75 a day for this MP. Nearly all messages are pleas for favours; overdue promises of financial help, a planned a harambee, school tuition pleas, or yet-to-be met promises of NG-CDF for schools, or pending invitations to church harambees.

Pegs are the eyes and ears of MPs in their constituencies. These are the people MPs may assign to represent them at public functions. Demand for the MPs’ participation in public events are many, which makes delegation necessary. Delegation makes it cheaper for the MP to lull the electorate.

The cost of public interaction with the electorate is usually much higher when the MP delivers himself manually to preying constituents. Some MPs have catering units in their village homes, serving chance visitors 12 hours daily.

Most of the time MPs have to tell tales of being too busy to attend a function in the constituency. Their preferred excuse, which often sounds plausible, is that mjumbe is attending a workshop in Mombasa, on a benchmarking trip in Naivasha, or is on a parliamentary committee trip abroad. Any lie is safe if it keeps away the MP from scavenging village crowds.

It’s expensive for the MPs to take trips to their constituencies every weekend, or every month. About Sh600,000, which is on the lower said, goes into handouts every time the MP travels to the constituency. One must learn to lie to reduce manual engagements with the electorate.

This is the tunnel vision context of Bunge Towers. The 28-floor edifice in the CBD swallowed Sh8.5 billion of public money. The initial budget was Sh6 billion.

The additional cost of Bunge Towers covers Sh150,000,000 tunnels for vehicles and pedestrians. The five-meter wide and 120 metre tunnels are intended to ‘protect’ MPs and senators from their constituents and ‘bothersome’ mobs that usually waylay the honourables along Parliament Way.

The city centre bunker for MPs and senators, which took a decade to complete, was due for official opening last Friday. The abrupt death of Chief of the Defence Forces Francis Ogola disrupted the plan.

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