Banning Travel Abroad Can Hardly Be Enough

26 April 2011

editorial

Nairobi — Maybe assistant ministers Kabando wa Kabando and Ndiritu Murithi have a salient point when they say that ministers and MPs should not be gallivanting all over Europe and Asia at a time when their people at home can no longer make ends meet.

So bad is the economy, the two MPs aver, that foreign travel for the two categories of politicians should be frozen until ways are devised to cut down on the ever-rising cost of living.

If this does not happen, they warn, and if the issue of the internally displaced persons is not resolved immediately, there is great danger of an “explosion of discontent”.

Such a warning should not be ignored or dismissed off-hand. In fact, these two are not the only ones to have sounded the alarm of late.

The matter of rising fuel and food costs, with their many multiplier effects, has even been debated in Parliament where Gwassi MP John Mbadi described it as a harbinger of an impeding social implosion.

So now Kenyans know the disease and its probable fatal effects. But what is the cure?

Banning costly junkets by our political leaders is just one thing the government can do. But that is hardly the solution to a seemingly intractable problem. More fundamental answers must be sought.

The bottomline is that the two coalition principles must seek ways to cushion the most vulnerable citizens from the effects of rising costs for everything, brought about by a spiralling inflation rate.

If they work hard, they will find ways of stilling the waters until the external and internal conditions that have brought us to this stabilise.

And if it is discovered that some few people are battening on the misery of the majority — the rent-seekers and profiteers — they must be stopped in their tracks. These are economic crimes, which are punishable by law.

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