Via the Nation’s Cutting Edge: “The huge pay increase for the President is a mere campaign ploy aimed at next year’s poll, says Moses Maragia. According to him, this is meant to get the public to react to the move, which the President will then reject, as he is being urged to do in some quarters. The calculated end result, Moses claims, is that “President Kibaki’s rating will definitely shoot up” for having rejected an offer by the MPs, which he didn’t ask for.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if this was true…knowing how base political strategy is in Kenya. Nevertheless, the persistent public outcry should now be extended to this bunch of overpaid yahoos.
I was talking about it with Gathara. A very astute, machiavellian tactic if that was the case!
Seems to be the case.
Come to think of it; given that a prezi will be a wealthy individual, and even if he were not, there are all these vested interests with perks to offer, and given kenyan’s beggar classification in the world, should not our prezis work for $1 a year (say like Bloomberg in NY)? The forfeited pay may not be much (to the Prez), but it send a message that “i am with you guys” to all those lesser mortals classified as surviving on less than $1/day. Good PR. One ot two souls moved up the food chain (say the $20,000/month is commited to some venture that lifts up the lifstyle in the slums/rurals).
I know, i know, i come from a different planet, why mbecha is not easily given away.
I think the greedy chaps wanted to keep the loot but the heat got too heavy, plus the elections are around the corner and Mzee is already buried in scum after scum.
On the whole this was a good sign for Kenyans that if we yell louder every time they try to pull a first one, we may just force them to respond to our demands.
This is probably the first time a Kenyan president reversed a decision due to public pressure. Of course we forced Moi to reverse Sec 2(A) to allow multiparty but we needed a river of blood to do that.
This is progress.
We know these fat cat very well. They are masters of nipe nikupe. Now that Kibaki has turned down the $18,000 per month, I wonder what will happen with the pending pay hike for MPs. Will MPs go ahead and push for it in parliament?