We volunteered.

If I had two cars and ten thousand shillings to service both of them, I'd have to make the ten thousand shillings count between the two cars. If I bought a third car, but still had ten thousand shillings to service all three, I would have no choice but to make the ten thousand shillings count. Except where I seemed to have an endless spigot of money. With such a spigot, I would never turn it off and I would buy more and more cars until I was sick of motoring.

Unless mathematics has undergone a radical change, at the very least the sums on either side of an equation must balance. We collect so much national revenue on the one side. We spend so much of the national revenue on the other. The latter is usually a higher sum than the former. The difference between the two is made up by loans, never mind the fancy names we apply to the loans. The cost of these loans is high. It is now being passed down to the next generation of Kenyans and, quite possibly, to their children.

We ratified the harmonised draft constitution in 2010 knowing full well that the Government of Kenya would dramatically expand. This is not something that came and bit us in the ass because we weren't paying attention. Some attempted to warn us of this expansion but we swatted away their concerns because we had been seduced by the idea of a new constitutional dispensation in which Chief Justice Evans Gicheru and Attorney-General Amos Wako would be given the steel toe and reforms would come upon us like manna from heaven. 

Mwai Kibaki had overseen a dramatic rise in Kenya's GDP and the economy was booming, after a fashion. Even the 2007/2008 crisis did not slow down the economy that much, not for the sectors that mattered to the Kibaki government anyway. And the Kenya Revenue Authority continued to rack up achievements in tax administration, swelling up the Consolidated Fund with its diligence.

Mwai Kibaki had also been in charge when Members of Parliament demonstrated an avarice that continues to boggle the mind, an avarice that has been emulated in the Judiciary and the senior ranks of the public service, including the boards of management of state corporations. Seven-figure remuneration packages for parliamentarians and senior state and public officials have become the norm. None of this is strange and none of it is a surprise. We did not "screw up the constitution."

We expanded the ranks of the seven-figure-salaried. This was even when we knew how much the Consolidated Fund would get on an annualised basis. But rather than hold our government's mandarin's feet to the fire, we turned a blind eye to the stupidity of keeping remuneration at the same level it was before we promulgated the constitution, making up the difference with more borrowing. Instead of paring down salaries, we listened to hamfisted lawyering that ignored the fiscal realities of the day and borrowed so that our modern-day African Maharajas and Maharanis could take home their seven-figure salaries. Screwed up the constitution? Please. We volunteered for this shit!