Imagine the absurdity of a defendant asking a judge to dismiss a criminal proceeding against him because he only killed one person instead of the two that he had been accused of. The judge would add contempt of the court and the criminal justice system on the already damning charge of first degree murder that the defendant has already confessed to.
The principle that makes it immoral to spend Ksh 602,000 a night on a hotel suit still holds in the case of spending Ksh 137,000 on the same. It does not make it better that a smaller amount of tax-payers money was wasted on frivolous pursuits than the earlier stated amount. Ksh 602,000 is enough to feed about 50,680 IDPs with plain ugali in a single sitting and the fact that only Ksh 137,000 was spent by the Prime Minister a night only implies that only 11,176 could have been fed.
A 2kg packet of Ndovu maize meal retails at Ksh 98 at the Uchumi supermarkets. This means that Ksh 137,000 would buy 1,397 2 kg packets of this maize meal. Assuming a single person consumes a 1/4 Kg of ugali this means that 11,176 mouths could have been fed with plain ugali as indicated earlier. Multiply this over a number of about 10 days and you get just how immoral spending this money on a mattress, a pillow, two sheets and maybe a blanket is. This doesn’t even incorporate the money spent by the aides and hang-ons.
It’s actually worse now since the statement by the Prime Minister’s office is actual evidence of the claims of over-spending which prior to this were just allegations. A person interested in the pursuit of truth and not just petty politics would have held his horses at the first mention of this matter by Cherangany MP Kutuny since his move could just as well have been one motivated by the witch hunting practices of our politicians.
But now that the Prime Minister’s office has issued these statements it is actually clear that questions must be raised. If added up over the period in which the Prime Minister and his team was abroad, the money spent by the tax-payers to fulfill the whims and fancies of the Prime Minister would easily run into the 7 figures realm.
All this while the country is running out of money to deal with the multitude of issues facing her. IDPs, drought, incursions into our borders, systemic corruption and on and on the list goes.