I have always wondered why citizens of some countries get angry anough to take up arms and rise against their governments. We all love peace after all. Today I found the answer.

Once again, Kenyan legislators are considering raising their fortunes by rewarding themselves with billions of shillings at the end of their term. Yes, ladies and gentlemen - the same MPs who rank among the highest-paid lawmakers in the world, while an overwhelming majority of their constituents lives under Sh.50 a day - want millions more.

That they have the guts to even think about emptying the treasury in the same fashion they did four years ago, is an insult to the 80 percent of Kenyans who can't afford healthcare. That they plan to make sure future MPs walk out with the same deal, if not better, after every term is like spitting in the faces of the disabled people crawling in the murky streets of Nairobi.

We moan about being a poor country, we are but our masters live like kings. So stark are our income inequalities that if my math is right, it will take the lowest paid teacher or policeman, frontline workers against ignorance and insecurity 50 years to earn the Sh.6 million MPs are proposing to award themselves at the end of the year.

But what hurts most is the fact that Kenyans will make noise for a few days, as they did the last time MPs upped their allowances, and forget about it. They will then go back to slaving in the fields as they always have to improve the economy so that the Tenth Parliament can cash in.

The inhumane actions of the legislators lead me to conclude that Kenya is way overdue for a revolution, and this time it better be a successful one. Parliament and the government are full of greedy goons, whose only concern is to get richer than they already are. What Kenyans saw in 2002 as the freest elections, a doing away with the old system and a turning point for the country, has clearly failed to lift them out of poverty. A means must be found to grab the country back from these usurpers and into the hands of its citizens.

The whole system needs a radical overhaul. Our political system is in the hands of criminals who could care less if Kenyans starved to death. Kenya has been enjoying false independence since 1963. European colonialists did not leave the country; they just turned black. The British handed power to the elite, who were, of course, the educated. And to be educated in the colonial days, one had to be a collaborator. When the elites took over power, they became worse than the brutish barbarians and shut the real freedom fighters out of government.

So it is that those same traits, that very apathy to the plight of ordinary Kenyans is sustained. Unless we have in government people who really feel the pain of the poor - people who have experienced agony themselves - the political class will always prey on us. Members of the Ninth Parliament have tested our patience twice before and what they have found out is that we turn the other cheek when they slap one. Having run out of cheeks, they are now climbing high, ready to piss down on us.