An elected representative in Kenya's National assembly does not seem to have the skills to handle a firearm but because he is an elected representative, a State officer and the nature of the work he does, he has been issued with a firearms license and walks about armed to the teeth like a Somali pirate. His misadventures in airports with his firearm seem not to have stilled the patently ridiculous demands by county elected representatives for firearms licenses, firearms and armed bodyguards.
Members of County Assemblies argue that they too are elected representatives, State officers, and that their nature of their work entitles them to firearms and armed bodyguards. They should look to poor John Munyes who was shot in the hip by his bodyguard; bodyguards are no good if they cannot handle their firearms and end up turning them on their protectees. The members of the National Assembly and their colleagues in the Senate have severe mental health problems but in comparison with the people elected to county assemblies, Members of Parliament are sagacious and sober as the proverbial judge.
Members of County Assemblies, MCAs, are mentally unhinged; they are the spiritual successors of councillors. Some of them have demonstrated that the bawling, chair-throwing, fisticuffs-driven approach to political score-settling is something they approve of. So too extortion, blackmail and outright influence-peddling. You must remember the story of the semi-literate member of the Nairobi City County Assembly who could barely string a simple sentence together in English and who had somehow managed to travel to Italy to "learn about growing wine." Imagine that one with a Ceska 9mm semiautomatic pistol with 14 rounds of ammunition and a user's manual written in liability-avoiding legalese.
Our elected representatives are afraid of us. I wonder if it has anything to do with the way they practice their art. In the great game of politics, MCAs and MPs are united in their incompetence. They are quite frankly the worst people to know. They lie. They cheat. They set Kenyan against Kenyan. And some of them have an unhealthy obsession with other men's junk an they will not miss an opportunity to mention those other men's junk or a peculiar element of that junk. Still others have an obsession with bedding everything that's in skirt such that their official offices have began to resemble Mexican bordellos.
So I do not take too kindly to Dr Abdi Nuh, the Speaker of the Tana River County Assembly's demand for firearms for his thousands of colleagues. I sympathise with Dr Nuh; Tana river is a very dangerous county. But the solution is not to turn MCAs into Rambo but to address the underlying social and economic schisms that have given rise to bandits and brigands. Dr Nuh's colleagues have not demonstrated that they have the self-control required to keep and bear firearms; they are to impetuous and full of themselves to be trusted with weapons of death.
In fact that rule that places guns in the hands of MPs and bodyguards at their beck and call should be repealed. If these people faced the same personal safety challenges ninety per cent of the citizens faced every day perhaps they would temper their words and concentrate their minds towards sorting out the public safety problems this nation clearly faces. If we do not trust them and some among us have less than benevolent intentions towards them it is their fault, not ours. The solution is not for the redeployment of scarce police manpower to keep philanderers safe from their irate spouses. Strip them all of their bodyguards. Yank their firearms licenses. If they don't sort out our problems, let them take their chances with the bandits and brigands just like we do.
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