But that was then, this is now and its budget season and the tables have turned. Now the mwananchi is no longer the much sought after kingmaker. Our leaders have now become venerable, excellencies, honourables, right honourables and you would think, invincible too.

Whenever they assemble in parliament ( their August House), the mwananchi has to be kept away from them, using the strictest measures and if necessary the most brutal force. Armed police on horse back or in riot gear and others handling the most menacing canines close off Parliament Road, Harambee Avenue and all other adjacent roads and lanes. Now the people are put in their place, they have to move and work and conduct their business so as not to obtrude into the sphere of their betters. 

For his own good, the mwananchi's contribution to the national purse is used to keep him away from those he has employed to work for him. Like a combat zone or the scene of a crime, the area around parliament is zoned off and any mwananchi unfamiliar with the programme or who finds himself unyielding to to it, is rapidly put in his place, escorted almost certainly with markings to remind him lest he should forget again.

All this is done to create a sense of elevated security, which benefit in spite of the offense caused to the mwananchi, assures our honourable leaders of their elevation above the people that pay to sustain their lavish ways . But this , as anyone with even the most basic training in the protection of terrestrial installations and corporeal entities knows, is a false sense of security.

The isolation of a probable target creates more potential for trouble than it does security. An isolated target is far easier to plot against and to hit. The isolation of the political class from their constituents, from taxpayers, serves to make harsher the resentment against government, it undermines national institutions and paints them as oppressive and unfeeling, the obstacles to the mwananchi's happiness.  This is especially the case in a period like the present when many Kenyans are beset by the most severe hardship while members of parliament lament even the possibility of taxation on their massive allowances. The distant politician is desensitised to the struggles of his people, those whose laments he is sent to Nairobi to address.  The effects of external realities on their way of life become as  exotic as a news report on the struggle of indigent Chinese in the face of a natural disaster.

The separation, to iterate, does not make the politcal class any safer, if anything, it accentuates the social crevice between the two groups and becomes a source of deeply held grievance and contempt in the long run. It is never in the interest of political leadership to extract contempt from its following. As for Parliament and other state institutions, the Commissioner of Police and whoever else makes these decisions would be well advised that it is wrong to close Parliament and Harambee roads and their adjacent lanes to human and vehicular traffic just because the President or the Prime Minister is in the vicinity or because parliament is in session. These are the mwananchi's institutions and whether she is desirous of nothing more serious than a peek or an exercise of his right to protest or demonstrate, access more yielding and a security arrangement less intrusive on city life would be desirable.  Five years after all is not such a long time, soon the very politicians will remember, even for that fleeting moment, who actually sends them to that plush, air-conditioned chamber.