Light touch: Why we won’t accept austerity measures in our county
Our Assembly Speaker is a maverick. The way he wades into trouble with his eyes wide open and escapes unscathed is baffling. I have a feeling he gets a kick out of the sight of angry, foaming-in-the-mouth MCAs.
For sure, he is always looking for ways to light the fire in our bellies. It seems he dislikes harmony in the county assembly. How else would you explain his knack for making notoriously unpopular decisions?
Last week, he was at it again. He sent text messages to each of us reading, “Dear MCA, as a leader, you are expected to sacrifice. Due to the tough economic times facing not only our country, but the whole world, each of us is requested to take a reduction in our allowances. We must institute cost-cutting measures.”
The seriousness of the austerity measures became more real inside the chambers last Wednesday. Before we began the proceedings that day, the Assembly Speaker talked of the need for belt-tightening measures. He said this was necessitated by the present reality that the whole world was going through tough times economically.
“We unanimously agreed to tighten our belts and prove that we are taking cost-cutting measures seriously,” said he. For reasons best known to himself, he was talking in an unusually low voice; he was barely audible. I strained to hear him. The situation was made worse by the murmuring, or rather, the loud consultations that were taking place in the house. I thought I was the only one listening until he announced, “Therefore, all members of this county assembly are expected to forgo their sitting allowances…” His voice was drowned in yelling and catcalls. His shouts of ‘Order! Order!’ could as well have been directed at the walls. It took a whole ten minutes for calm to be restored.
MCA Chonjo stood to speak. “Mr Speaker, why do these hostility measures only apply to our county? Kwani are we the ones who brought the economic hard times? We are not, I repeat, we are not going to take any allowance reduction.
Don’t ever try to touch my sitting allowance.” He spoke with so much energy that at one moment I thought he would go for the speaker’s neck. “Go and tell whoever sent you to stop dreaming. In fact, we should be given a stress allowance!” he thundered to deafening applause.
“Members, let’s not be unreasonable,” declared the Speaker. This set the house on fire. Everybody now had something to say, and was saying it as loudly they could. The house quickly degenerated into a den of chaos. Fists waving in the air. Catcalls from all corners. Then, above all this din, someone screamed, “Impeach!” This call was taken up and the whole house began chanting in unison, “Impeach! Impeach! Impeach!”
The assembly speaker looked shaken. I saw him consulting with the Leader of Majority, MCA Pinto. It then took the efforts of this MCA to restore order in the house. Pinto was one member who commanded the respect of the whole house probably due to his age and knack for coming up with well thought-out solutions to thorny issues.
“Colleagues,” he began as soon as calm had returned. “You have spoken out loud and clear, and our Speaker has heard you. He has an announcement to make and I beg that we listen to him without interruption.” There was pin-drop silence in the house. The Speaker, now looking composed, stood and said, “Dear Friends, in the spirit of consultation and wide participation in decision making, I have decided that a committee of the whole house shall proceed for a one-week retreat to..”
“Zanzibar!” someone shouted.
The Speaker did not respond to this. Instead, he continued, “We shall head for a retreat to iron out this issue and to brainstorm on cost-cutting measures.”
“Yeeeees!” we said in unison.
“How many days will the retreat take?” asked MCA Matayo
“I guess three days is enough?”
“Nooo!” came a chorus.
“Mr Speaker, for us to discuss this sensitive and global matter, we need at least a week,” said Matayo. An applause.
“Ok, we can go for a week.”
“Speaker for Governor 2027!” someone yelled.
We are now preparing for the retreat to a yet to be announced venue. What matters, however, is that we will get our one week’s allowance. Kwani iko nini?
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