Ben Tekee

Letter to Fellow Members of Parliament: @Senate_KE @NAssemblyKE Good evening Colleagues? Today is one of those days many of you will ask me what the fuck are you smoking, Ledama? But truth be told.. Look at how extreme wealth is manufactured the moment someone is appointed Cabinet Secretary or elected County Governor in Kenya. It is not talent. It is not hard work. It is pure, raw power and we in Parliament have watched it happen for years. A Cabinet Secretary or a Governor does not simply implement policy. They control the regulations and budgets that decide who eats and who starves in entire sectors and counties. They study the law, locate every loophole, every grey area, every discretionary power we in Parliament carelessly left them and then they quietly position their private companies, proxies, nominees, relatives, lovers and trusted intermediaries to monopolise the opportunities that follow. … Advertising is one of the most brazen examples. Seasoned operators from the big agencies suddenly resign, register new firms overnight, and within months they are vacuuming multimillion-shilling government and county campaigns. The link is almost never written on paper. It is personal. Boyfriends. Girlfriends. New relatives. Old schoolmates. Trusted bagmen. The public pays. The connected feast. We passed the Conflict of Interest law with great ceremony. In reality it has been little more than a public-relations exercise designed to impress the IMF and foreign donors. We in Parliament know this. True, organised, industrial scale corruption in Kenya does not live in county assembly corridors or among junior clerks. It lives at the apex of the executive and in county boardrooms where the power to write the rules, award the contracts, and direct the advertising budgets is concentrated and we have failed to shut it down. Now ask yourselves a simple, damning question: how many private helicopters have been registered to Kenyans since 2013? The published lists are dominated by politicians and those closest to power. Some individuals own multiple aircraft. The numbers surge around election cycles. These machines are not bought with official salaries. They are flying monuments to the speed and scale at which public office has been converted into private fortune while ordinary Kenyans are ordered to tighten their belts. This is not governance. This is extraction. Until we in Parliament close the rules that allow those in the executive and in the counties to legislate and budget themselves rich and enforce them without fear or favour the cycle will continue. A small, protected circle will keep growing obscenely wealthy. The rest of the country will keep paying the price. The time for silence is over. Are we really honourable Members ? Distinguished Senators or a disgrace?