Do not doubt the degree of my scepticism.

A strange event occurred yesterday: a parliamentary committee was divided over whether the deal between Government of Kenya and Safaricom Limited was in the interests of the people. This  shouldn't come as a surprise.

We are assured by many astute managers of money that nearly all our elected representatives are not as rich as we would presume them to be; they have too many financial commitments for which the million-shilling-plus package is insufficient. There is a parliament that was ignominiously outed as possessed of members willing to take bribes from "outside interests", I believe is how they were described, to ask questions in the National Assembly. The same parliament's members were willing to take bribes to vote for or against censure motions, regardless of party whips or loyalties. It is not too great a leap to presume that this parliament is not possessed of members who would be willing to take bribes to scuttle a government security tender...or protect one once it has been awarded. No one is alleging that to be the case, but we would be naive to believe that it could not possibly be done.

Some of us have taken pragmatism to a pathological level. We are the skeptics' skeptics and until Lord God Himself walks among us and shows us He is God, we are unwilling to take the assurances of probity broadcast far and wide by the members of the elected classes to be true. Therefore our deeply held suspicions about the near-certainty that members of the security establishment and the parliamentary establishment may be trousering a fraction of the billions of shillings being bandied about in relation to the security of the Republic remain at troublingly high level. Therefore, the political pantomime being enacted and re-enacted in front of the cameras of the broadcast media and the theatrical accusations and counter-accusations made for the benefit of the unwashed masses will not trigger in the most pragmatic among us an automatic belief that one side or the other is in the pocket of one interested party or the other.

If you want to know why we are skeptical about the whole thing, this should sober you up. Some time in the mid-2006, the Official Leader of the Opposition was the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee. The Committee investigated bent transactions in the security sector. Their hearing were very public and very impassioned. The Committee recommended the cancellation of tenders, agreements and stoppage of payments. Kenyans were impressed. Eight years later that PAC Chairman is now President and he has just authorised the National Treasury to make payments for the same tenders and agreements that he had passionately and publicly caviled against. Do not doubt the degree of my scepticism.

I do not ascribe to the theory that Kenyan politicians can be salvaged. It is a theory that has even bested-bleeding heart liberals, or what would pass for bleeding-heart liberals in Kenya. The insidious infiltration of the political arena by specimens of humanity that even hell would reject for the extremes they will go to in their interests has seen the core business of Parliament being auctioned off to the highest bidder with the basest morals. It is how billions of shillings can simply be palmed off to a trickster without the firmament of government going into anaphylactic shock. It is how we can turn a blind eye to men, women, children and livestock starving to death but still consider setting aside hundreds of millions to feed wild game. Do not doubt the degree of my scepticism.