Are our MPs the same as petty criminals?

In my neighborhood, we live at the mercy of petty drug addicts who are called “Teja” Now a Teja is a person who is so addicted to hard drugs like bhang and heroin and will do anything to ensure that they get a fix of the substances.

And their modus operandi is in a way simple yet lethal and has left tears in many a woman.

 

What they usually do is lay about on matatu stages just like any other customer. Mostly they will hang near the window of a vehicle and when it is just about to move, they will grab a woman’s purse and disappear mainly in the labyrinth of alleys that is characteristic of Mombasa.

 

Usually they work in a hunting pack and when a person shouts thief, the rest of the team will join in shouting thief in a way aimed at providing a decoy more than helping capture the thief.

When they raid people’s homes they will steal small things like sufurias and spoons, irons and DVD players. If you get one in the cookie jar he will tell you he was just trying to see if you are alert.

As I thought about Teja and their acts, I could not fail to link our no so honorable Mps to them. That, our MPs act in ways that are simple and yet lethal. That they can afford to sit down and in a record forty minutes pass a motion that approves their pay-rise in substantial amounts.

And just like Tejas who will wait for a vehicle to move before they can pounce, they will wait until it seems line nobody is watching to quickly bring in a motion that approves their pay-rise and pay-offs. When everybody else is out shouting that the Teja has disappeared with a woman’s handbag, a handful of Mps will appear and declare how foolhardy it was for their colleagues to approve a pay-rise when the country is in financial doldrums.
 

And that brings me to a case cited in Chinua Achebe’s Man of the people where a shopkeeper named Josiah was hell bent on stealing from the people to an extent of stealing a walking stick from a blind man. According to Achebe, Josiah was driven out of business by public outrage and boycott. Achebe says that he had stolen too much for the owner to know.

 

Our Mps might be reveling in their decision to raise their pay and give themselves hefty retirement pay packs. They might steal the “walking stick” from the public by failing to pay taxes that would help improve the state of nation’s infrastructure and other critical development factors. But, they should know that the owner has known.

In due time, the owner is going to get outraged and will boycott their products and they will find that they are out of business. If they want to know they should ask the members of the 9th parliament who faced with public outrage over their tendencies to award themselves hefty pay-offs were sent home packing in their hundreds.

And just like we have done in our area, we have sworn to ensure that no Teja is given space to operate and if one is caught trying to steal, it is either a severe beating that may often end up in a lynch. Fact is time has come for us to  "lynch" our MPs out of parliement.