Why we want the Parliamentary Service Commission scrapped

By Okiya Omtatah Okoiti
Public Interest Litigation Group

Like the ears of a submerged hippopotamus sticking above the water, the MPs’ disgusting refusal to be taxed is a tiny pointer to a hidden but much bigger scandal playing out in Parliament. We are not going to waste our precious time clipping those insignificant ears; we are going after the submerged animal in its entirety. To save our beloved country we must kill the hippopotamus causing the existential threat. That’s why we have aimed our hunting spears at the monsters’ heart.

The rot in Parliament is buried away under layers and layers of self-serving, illegal and toxic legislation concealing a staggering breadth of corruption. Having abandoned their noble role of being our representatives, our MPs morphed into an extremely exploitative cartel that abused and continues to abuse its legislative powers to short-change us like we have never been by any institution or group of individuals in the history of independent Kenya.

The Parliamentary Service Commission (PSC) is not a commission. It is a toxic corporation that was illegally created by evil geniuses as their conduit for looting public coffers. Though they located it in Parliament they deviously legislated to place its nefarious functions outside the jurisdiction of the Constitution of the Republic of Kenya. That way, it could cater to their greed unchallenged by any institutional accountability instruments enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic of Kenya.

The fraudulent instrument of grand theft by public servant is accountable to nobody. Not to the Executive, not to the Judiciary, and not even to Parliament. Not the entire Government or any of its three arms can exercise any institutional check over the vampire entity that is sucking the Republic of Kenya dry of its precious blood.

In fact, the vampire PSC operates unconstitutionally as the undemocratic Fourth Arm of Government to whom all the other three are subservient.

Left unchallenged, this atrocity, this ogre, which has already hurt this country in more ways than both the Goldenberg and Anglo-Leasing scams combined, and whose annual budget today is close to 8 billion Kenya shillings, will destroy our country faster than any law-abiding citizen can say, “na uta do?”.

Already, it denies ordinary Kenyans quality representation by reducing Parliamentary service to a rat race for illicit money. This attracted all manner of shadowy characters from the underworld who, caring nothing about why Parliament exists, fought viciously at the last elections to become MPs. Their only concern being to partake of the juicy scam.

But the real rot extends beyond the obese perks the PSC illegally gives the MPs. There is also the serious endemic employment fraud where MPs’ relatives and hangers-on of dubious qualification and ability are absorbed into public service with neither the knowledge nor the approval of the Public Service Commission.

Fortunately for us, the majority of Kenyans are determined to see Kenya become the Republic it was intended to be. A republic is governed by law not by men. Hence, our humble prayers to the High Court to stop this fraudulent use of donated legislative power for criminal personal gain at the expense of the common good.