Kenyan politicians react with horror at suggestions that Kenya displays characteristics of a banana republic or alternatively shows signs of a becoming a failed state. From their obscenely pampered perspective, their reaction seems valid.

Our MPs, who are now proposing a Bill that would make criticism of that shameless House a criminal offence, are some of the highest paid legislators in the world, with fringe benefits that are the envy of workers at large corporations.

Former presidents Moi and Kibaki enjoy retirement benefits exceeding those of retired heads of state of by-far richer countries.

In most countries, moving from the private sector to public office is motivated by a desire to make a difference in people’s lives. Quite often, earnings drop by as much as half on joining the public sector. In Kenya, people seek a parliamentary seat for the money and privileges.

An MP in the last parliament once narrated to me and others how he sold part of his property to finance his campaign. Going against what we knew, we waited for him to talk about the Bills he had helped pass and the lives he had impacted, thus making his sacrifices worthwhile.

But the MP leaned back into his chair, and without an iota of shame, announced that the investment was paying off. He left no doubt as to his meaning!

Our politicians are provided bodyguards by the state, so they do not have to run the gauntlet of armed robbers on their way home. They live in gated residencies under 24-hour guard by police and private security companies, while the rest of us lock ourselves in houses that have become fortresses, often in vain.

The honourables ride in expensive four-wheel-drive cars financed by the state, cruising effortlessly over our potholed streets. Their children go to private schools as ours labour through a decaying public education system, forever beset by strikes because teachers have not been paid.

The honourables receive First-World healthcare paid for by the state, as we die in crumbling public health facilities paralysed by strikes because doctors and nurses have not been paid.

We thought devolved government would address some of these disparities. But alas, it was a great con. The Members of the County Assemblies, MCAs, are clamouring to be paid as much as MPs.

While waiting for the gravy train, they visit, at taxpayers’ expense, exotic places around the world, to learn, they tell us with impish grins, about building clinics and schools.

Governors — the budding tin-pot dictators who want to be accountable to no one but themselves — now spend all their time campaigning for more money to be given to the counties, regardless of the fact that the amounts they have received so far have been underutilised, stolen or used to underwrite the opulent lifestyles of themselves and their newly-created bureaucrats.

The Senators, idle for most of the time, now want in. They, too, are proposing salary hikes on top of huge salaries that many observers had complained were not commensurate with their limited mandate.

The Auditor-General’s report shows that the presidency spent inordinate amounts of money on travel, and exposed misappropriation of money under the cover of an anomaly called “executive privilege.”

And there was that little matter, a few months ago, of the hiring of a private jet to undertake self-serving diplomacy! The judiciary, too, has been accused of misusing millions of shillings in questionable deals.

To this orgy of theft, add state-facilitated mega-corruption such as Goldenberg and Anglo-Leasing and you have gargantuan state plunder.

Who will protect Kenyans from a parasitic state? South African Judge Johann Krieglar hinted at the fundamental problem and the solution. Answering a question about Kenya’s political progress, the judge said that mobilisation along tribal lines persisted five years after the ethnic violence of 2007/8.

This situation, he said, would only stop when Kenyans refused to be manipulated and told the politicians “enough is enough.” Likewise, the plundering of Kenya by its own state will only stop when Kenyans demand it.

Tee Ngugi is a political and social commentator based in Nairobi.