There have been whispers that President William Ruto is not entirely his own man but rather a puppet of those who propelled him into power. This is not a reference to the Kenyan voters who cast their ballots in August 2022, but something more sinister, the West, particularly the United Kingdom, with the tacit approval of the United States and their allies, long before Kenyans went to the polls in 2022.
If that is true and if so how true will never be known without a full, complete, and unfettered investigation of the 2022 elections, and that will never happen. Except there is a distinct possibility that those who were deeply involved in any shenanigans may someday look back on their deathbeds and gloat at how they accomplished the impossible.
Regardless of how Ruto ended up as our fifth President, he is the President, and as with any president, the buck stops with him in how well or badly the country is doing. His decisions and actions—or lack there of - directly and significantly impact every Kenyan's life.
Right now, any objective observer would say the country is not doing well; in fact, it is doing badly and certainly not even remotely close to what Ruto and Kenya Kwanza promised in the lead-up to the 2022 elections.
Acting as though he knows something nobody else knows, other than himself and those around him the closest, Ruto is about to ram through Parliament the unpopular Finance Bill, 2024 that most Kenyans don’t like. It gives off a stench in its short-lived journey in Parliament to critic within a whiffing distance.
So much so that a cadre of young Kenyans—or, more specifically, Generation Z - took to the streets to demonstrate against the Finance Bill 2024. Called “Occupy Parliament,” the young protesters many of yesteryear when university students led in the buildup to the Second Liberation. Generation Z, or Gen Z, is the name of the generation of born between 1997 and 2012.
The reminder was given by the police, who showed up with their water cannons determined to use pressure to blow the young demonstrators like papers and debris on the street. It was a horrifying and tone-deaf exercise, especially given the only sin committed by these young people was expressing themselves as guaranteed by the Constitution.
The images of water tanks blowing high-pressure water against the hapless young demonstrators was a poignant reminder of not only past successful efforts to be heard, but a pointer to what can happen if there is powerful resistance and will.
Social media, meantime, was replete with posts about how MPs have lined up to get their brown envelopes to vote for the Finance Bill. It is a shame, but that is the reality of Kenyan politics.
One need not be a dictator like Kim Jong Un of North Korea to get his way in Kenya’s Parliament; rather, there is more than one way to skin a cat, and in Kenya—or Africa for that matter, there are three known effective ways besides outright ordering as dictators do and these are bribes, intimidation of prosecution and intimidation using violence.
These are effective means because bribes will always get the unprincipled, always ready to eat, while the targets who are neither can risk finding out in hell the price of ignoring threats in the case of violence or jail in the case of the prosecution.
That is why this move by Gen Z is refreshing and must be encouraged by all who care about the country's future, for it may just be the only way the country can correct its course. For example, likely as a response to the Gen Z demonstrations, Finance Committee chair Molo MP Kimani Kuria, informed the country that several contentious clauses had been dropped. These include the proposed VAT on bread, transportation of sugarcane, foreign exchange transactions, excise duty on vegetable oil, and 2.5 percent Motor Vehicle Tax.
That is a good start. Now the President William Ruto needs to go back to the drawing board, figure out everything he has done wrong and fix it if he has a shot of avoiding being one-term president prospect he is facing.