Change or be replaced.

A man collapsed and died last week. He had managed to raise three hundred thousand shillings as "earnest" money for the recruitment of his son into the National Police Service. He suffered a great shock when his son was rejected during the recruitment exercised. He suffered such a great shock his heart stopped and he died.

You may wonder what this has to do with the exercise commenced with such pomp and circumstance immediately after the promulgation of the Constitution that sought to reform the National Police Service, and transform it from a force into a service. So do I and millions more who watch with horror as new evils are revealed about the manner in which the National Police operate. I can almost imagine that the police too wonder whether they are reforming or simply making the right noises at the right time to persuade themselves that reforms are taking place.

Policing in Kenya is anything but efficient, effective or modern. Police may have modern equipment: cars, radios, computers and closed circuit television cameras. They may have recently been promised "insurance" to cover them for the risks hey bear while striving to keep us safe. Better housing may be in the offing for the vast majority that live in squalor. Professional training may be available for those on whom the gods have smiled and awarded them opportunities to travel to foreign universities, usually in western capitals. The knotty question of remuneration may be undergoing serious review too. But how we recruit, train, deploy and manage the police have remained hide-bound since the days of the colonial Home Guard.

This is a problem that afflicts the entire firmament of the National Executive, and has become a contagion spreading across county executives' offices abroad in the land. In the edifice that is the National treasury building on Harambee Avenue, there are three sets of lifts: four lifts for the working stiffs, one for the senior staff and one for the VIPs. You should not be surprised to hear that the Senior Staff and VIP lifts are gilded and can only be operated by someone with a key. And just in case someone not authorised to ride in those lifts somehow manages to gain entry, each is permanently occupied by an "operator" whose sole job is to verify that one is indeed authorised to ride in that lift. Do I need to point out that the four reserved for the use of lesser beings are not gilded or that they are prone to frequent malfunctions? If I do then you have not been paying attention.

The National Treasury is a reflection of the situation with the National Police. The Inspector-General, his two deputies and senior members of his staff are the gilded ones, enjoying, I shit you not, Gold Level insurance policies. Their remuneration packages put private sector professionals of similar age and experience to shame. They live in the lap of luxury: they own their own homes, their children attend upper class private schools, they have cars, drivers and bodyguards. Freshly deployed police share living quarters regardless of the sex of the ones sharing. Their remuneration is barely sufficient to sustain them, let alone start a family. Their children share the same fate as the millions of children whose parents can only afford the "free" primary education and subsidised secondary education offered by the Government of Kenya. What is shocking is that because of the failed economic policies of fifty years, there are parents willing to pay bribes in order for their children to be recruited by an institution that does not really care for them and will do everything in its power to corrupt their souls and kill their spirit.

We have pretended for far too long that we can have our cake and eat it; that we can run with the hares and hunt with the hounds. Those days are surely up when we cannot protect ourselves from brigands and bandits or even from the greedy, grasping hands of our police. We have elided the need for the strict application of the law against those who would abuse our trust. It is time that we rejected the official perfidy that has become the norm. If the men we have tasked with the job of sweeping out the Augean Stables the Government has become are not up to the task, we must find someone else who is. Excuses will no longer suffice. The presidency has made promises. Members of Parliament have made promises. The Judiciary has made promises. It is time they kept those promises. The time for piteously whingeing about "resources" is over.