A PETITION TO HONORABLE MEMBERS

A petition

From the Kenyan matatu touts, the roadside maize roaster, the cobbler, the peasant farmer, the shopkeepers, the teachers, the nurses, the men in uniform, the hustling youth, the underpaid government employee, the forgotten people of northern Kenya and everyone in the struggling social strata of the Kenyan society.

To the honorable members of Kenyan parliament.

Honorable members:

For many years you have been practicing without theory and without principle, in cunning ways you have let our resources flow into plunder. Feeding us with fallacy after fallacy of the workings of the economy, plausibly putting forward economic theories and facts which blinded our very reasoning and thus we entrusted you with our future, with our hopes for a brighter future.

Your deception can be measured by the rising food prices, rising oil prices, misappropriation of our money in bogus contracts and projects that can be referred to as white elephants.   

The little knowledge that we have of political economy tells us that economic growth is not the solution to our problems honorable members and it seems like you don’t understand these simple dynamic.

Being the prime drivers of the economy we have a right to be consulted in drawing the budget but since your interests come first you by passed us in coming up with the said budget but please consider the following.

Henry Hazlitt said something important which we as Kenyans are pointing out to you through this petition, when analyzing economics you “must trace not merely the immediate result but the results in the long run, not merely the primary consequences but the secondary consequences, and not merely the effects on some special group but the effects on everyone”, to this end don’t make economic  mistakes today that will bring misery to the generation of the future, make the product of the 5.6% economic  growth equitable and available to us all and not only a few clique of selfish individuals and till then the recent read trillion shillings economic budget will not mean anything to us.

We understand you like to spend on programs to please your constituents and over the past many years you have been driven by projects which will guarantee you secure votes in the future.

We formally ask these noble duties of you so as to achieve economic progress in the name of development; formulate bills that will effect a legal system that protects privately owned property and enforces contracts in even-handed manner, provide competitive markets, place limits on government regulation, establish an efficient capital market to channel capital into wealth-creating projects, ensure monetary stability, lower the tax rates, ensure free trade and effectively order our priorities.

To give you some empirical and real life examples of our plight today honorable members, the following are some extracts from the everyday Kenyan conversation.

“the price of jogoo,1kg of maize flour, is now more than twice what it cost 5 years ago- uchumi kweli ni mbaya”

“I stopped taking tea in the morning like I used to, however much I would like to, I can’t afford a ¼ kg of sugar”

“ these days going home from work is something I don’t look forward to like I used to, seeing the looks in my kids eyes and knowing I cant give them enough food to my, my husband doesn’t even talk to me these days, his obsession is watching the evening news, he sulks and the look on his face is of a deceived person”.

“am shutting down my shop, I cant continue selling basic foodstuffs to people whom I know cant afford them, I always hear dissatisfaction and slow groans when I announce the new food price”.

These are just some of our cries, honorable members, and you tell us Kenya is headed in the right direction, you might be on the right track since you are not headed to any particular destination.

The uchumi is growing but where is the money going? Yes, to your oversees accounts, that we know waheshimiwa and we need not mention specific cases like the recent  4.2 billion shillings embezzled education fund and the so many other unexposed plunder of our money, We are a forgiving society, we don’t want to dwell in the past, just try hard to end the habit of stealing from  poor Kenyans.

Our petition honorable members implores your humane conscience, If at all you have any, to try to feel our pain and work towards relieving us of these burden which your selfish interests has heaped on our  backs.

Honorable members don’t be ……. “ A canker who cankers the very wood wherein he stays, or the snake who stings and bites those who managed milk for him”

Yours,

suffering Kenyans.