A Kenyan Member of Parliament (MP) is compensated to the tune of Kshs750,000 (approximately $10,000) a month. This includes mileage, entertainment allowance, extraneous allowance, house allowance and monthly car maintenance. If you are a vice-president, minister, assistant minister or parliamentary service commission member, add another Kshs 300,000.

Note that the current parliament, 10th Parliament, has 207 sworn MP’s!

The 10th parliament MP’s did not start work until march 6th,2008 and in case you were wondering, yes they got paid for the month of January and February. Ok so they worked one day in January when they elected the speaker and his deputy but that is it! Shortly after President Kibaki prorogued parliament until March! So why did they get paid for February? Why didn’t they get a pro-rate for the month of January?

I think part of the problem is that MP’s determine their own pay. So every time there is a new parliament, the first order of business is to up salaries. The 9th parliament gave themselves a Kshs1.4 billion gratuity in addition to an existing pension despite a huge protest from wananchi. The MP’s in that session - 222.

Perharps this demand to have the MP’s salaries drastically reduced through this petition will finally send the message home.

Now on his second term in office as MP for the Laisamis constituency in Kenya, Joseph Lekuton is certainly setting a wonderful example as an african leader. If only we could get the rest of the politicians to follow suit?

 
He recently gave a short talk about his story and ‘A parable for Kenya’ at a Technology, Entertainment, Design (TEDAfrica) conference.

 
You can help further this great cause by taking part in any of these initiatives.

• Cows for kids
• Boma Fund
• The Nomadic Kenyan Children’s Educational Fund

 
You make me proud Mheshimiwa!

Well i would say more than upset…tsk..tsk..

It all began when the Democratic Presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama turned down an invitation from Tavis Smiley to attend the State of the Black Union to be held on feb 23, 2008 in New Orleans.
Obama sent Smiley an open letter stating that because of his hectic campaign schedule, he would not be able to make the event and instead offered to have his wife, Michelle Obama attend on his behalf.

Not only does Smiley deny that Michelle was ever offered as a substitute but he reckons that even if she were offered he would have ‘respectively’ declined “just as we would have declined had Hillary Clinton offered Bill Clinton, had John McCain offered Cindy McCain, had Mike Huckabee suggested Janet Huckabee”. Listen here.

Michelle Obama responded to his comments when she appeared on the Michael Baisden Show .

Prior to this issue, Smiley did a commentary on Obama for the Tom Joyner Morning show telling black people to take a ‘pause at the phenomenon that is Barack Obama’. He claimed to offer this advice about all candidates but he spent the whole commentary on just Barack. He goes on to say that Obama should be accountable to black people for more and should make black people aware of what he seeks to deliver. Hello? where have you been? hasn’t he already done that? and why does Smiley assume that black people are not smart enough to research this stuff? And why does he have a problem with Barack transcending race?

Bottom line, Smiley is not balanced and has been going at Obama from the start and Obama’s inability to attend this event was the straw that broke the camels back

My conclusion - Smiley is the crab in the barrel - he is totally envious of Obama’s success and pretty soon he will be lining up behind Bob Johnson,Joe Reed et al for Hillary.

Speaking of Hillary, she is the only presidential candidate that has accepted Smiley’s invitation to attend this event. After the failed race baiting tactics in South Carolina, she most certainly needs black votes - so of course she is going.