Recently in ‘The Economist’ I came upon an article that left me completely baffled – ‘Leaders of the fee world’. I used to hear about the exuberant salaries and facilities the political leaders in the developing world have at their disposal (if you still haven’t, check out recent Wouter’s post), but I have to say I had no idea about such glaring discrepancies.
Just take a look yourselves at this graph:
Courtesy: The Economist
Two weeks ago Kenya's prime minister, Raila Odinga rejected an increase of his salary to nearly $430,000 a year, a rise which would place him among the highest-paid political leaders in the world. The Kenyan MP’s however fearlessly granted themselves a 25% boost to $161,000. Indeed there are two Kenyan tribes, I thought.
The basic salary is obviously just a part of the total salary(including all the expenses) and although the graph doesn’t show much about the corruption and transparency issues, it is anyway very interesting.
I am a great fan of Polyp’s cartoons. The topics he covers are very much related to our Th!nk3 theme.
Images: Courtesy: Adal Voice, Polyp
What do you th!nk?
@Helena, you called our attention for something very important. These blatant discrepancies are inadmissible. That list surprised me quite a lot. What can developed countries do to halt this (besides piling pressure upon such leaders)? Well, such actions would be taken as some sort of intervention in their domestic affairs, wouldn’t? I believe we have to discuss it deeply.
Oh, BTW, I loved the cartoons! I’m a cartoon junkie
Part of the problem must be, as Wouter also wrote about in one of his posts (http://development.thinkaboutit.eu/think3/post/accountability_starts_with_countability/) that people without proper education don’t have a grasp on numbers. They don’t know how much is a lot and how much is little.
Therefore they really don’t know or understand that their leaders are sucking their country dry and can’t revolt against it.
Yeah, Liisa, you’re right, providing education for those people is crucial. But that is a long-term plan. And for a short one? What can we and our governments do?
Ahhhh….capitalism…that’s all I would like to say
Like the Romans already said a long time ago:
“Give the paupers their bread and games and they won’t be annoying”.
Nothing is changing. (At least very little).
it made me reflect.. thx
Fantastic cartoons, particularly the first one.
@ all of you guys - thanks for your comments!
))
@Clare - have you seen other Polyp’s cartoons? they’re hilarious
CHeers Helena, I’ll check them out.
Is Kenya representative of Africa at large? From the chart it seems like the south east asian tiger economies stand out a little. Interesting that India and China stand out in the other end of the chart.
Flabbergastingly bamboozling
Too bad the Economist has a paywall.. :s