When, 10 years ago, the Anglo-Saxon world imposed the multi-party system on us, the argument was that that was the only legitimate form of democracy and that it was only in our own interest. Democracy was the people's voice, being heard through a freely elected parliament.

That being so, we were told, whatever a majority of parliamentarians ordained was sacrosanct and never to be impugned. Many of us, of course, saw through the smokescreen, and warned aloud. But Kanu had so emasculated Parliament that multi-partyism seemed to many as our only salvation.

The point, nevertheless, is that the Western world was working directly through our own political activists. I cannot say the activists had consciously agreed to be used in this way against Kenya's real interests. I don't know. But the fact remains that it was they who carried the day. It was they, then, who were responsible for this hoodwinking.

For you reap only what you sow. And if the activists, many of them parliamentarians, now discover that the legislative independence which they had been pledged with such fanfare was only a camouflage for something sinister, they have only themselves to blame.

Why were we made to waste so much money, time, temper and other resources to put up a House which the same official Western world is now telling is not responsible to the people but only to that world? For that is exactly what the IMF and the World Bank are saying. They have ordered our Parliament to pass certain Bills or we must forgo certain peanuts called "development aid".

It transpires, then, that Third World parliamentary independence is to be suffered by our "donors" only so long as our MPs make decisions which do not harm Western interests in Kenya. As soon as they start making independent decisions, somebody descends on them with a heavy bludgeon. Parliament has become the fig leaf of absolutism.

Only that this time, it is not Kanu's absolutism, but Washington DC's and London's. So why was all that noise from Western Europe and North America about democracy, freedom and self-determination? Why is it better for Washington DC to dictate to our Parliament than for State House, Nairobi, to subjugate it the same way it did the Sixth Parliament?

If Parliament must do things only in accordance with the wishes of institutions whose deep self-interests over these issues is now self-evident, why do we need Parliament at all?

The answer is clear to anybody familiar with the history of liberalism. It is that form or appearance is all-import. Content must be sacrificed on the altar of outward "beauty". Through Parliament, we appear to be freely discussing our problems. And, as long as the "discussion" does not threaten some material stake in our country, hunkydory.

But as soon as it begins doing things in a manner that does not promote that stake, the pretence is thrown to the dogs. You are simply told to shut your mouth. But, for a country as poor as Kenya, it is at the height of irresponsibility – it is extreme cruelty – to be forced to spend much of your meagre resources on an institution which can merely talk, but has few teeth with to bite and, when it bites at all, is told by Big Brother to shut up.

Far be it from me to assert that Parliament's rejection of the Bill on economic crimes, for instance, was done in the people's name. There is much to be said for the public suspicion that most MPs voted against it only because the MPs are among those who issue the duddest of cheques.

No, our Parliament has too many self-interested, greedy, semi-illiterate and intellectually vacuous members. Well, in that case, we are between the devil and the deep sea. We have to choose between deeply controverted but relatively independent legislators and predatory sharks from another world who perpetually seek to offer us only a Heath Robinson cartoon called democracy as our solution to "development" and to dangle a bait called "aid" in our faces to make us willingly part with our wealth.

Do you call it aid when I shove a few tens of miserable shillings into your left pocket but immediately, through the transnational banks and a hopelessly lopsided world trade system, I pull billions of shillings out of your right pocket? For an answer, let me refer the reader to Graham Hancock's Lords of Poverty, among growing literature on this issue.

The agonising thing is that – although you wouldn't know it from our activists, themselves having questionable links with unofficial "donors" – many Third World statemen know very well the meaning of these pretences about democracy and aid. But because they have such personal stakes in the charade, they dare not raise a finger.

As for me, there is no question in the mind. I would rather a corrupt Parliament than the predatory international system. For, however faulty it may be, it is our Parliament. There is everything we can do to purge it of any rot. But it is far more difficult to take on a behemoth whose roots are overseas, beyond our reach.

The task that faces Kenya's voters is to latch onto representatives who understand and sympathise with their problems and work tirelessly to help them surmount those problems, including the desperate struggle to save them from this single-minded Western determination to strangle them.

* This columnist can be reached at Ochieng@dailynation.com