President William Ruto of Kenya on Wednesday bowed to his people, refusing to assent to a finance bill that introduced new taxes that the people protested against.
The Kenyan Parliament passed the bill on Tuesday, June 25, but Kenyan youths, who had held a series of street protests against the bill since it was sent to the parliament a week earlier, escalated their protest by forcing their way into the parliament and setting a part of it on fire as the lawmakers scampered for safety.
President Ruto who has the final say about signing the bill or discarding it, chose the latter on Wednesday, saying he was withdrawing the bill.
“I concede and therefore I will not sign the 2024 Finance Bill and it shall subsequently be withdrawn,” Ruto said in a televised address.
“The people have spoken,” the president asserted, adding that he would now start a dialogue with Kenyan youths.
Ruto refrained from the details of what the dialogue would be, but he hinted that it would include austerity measures that would start with cuts to the expenses of his own office.
The president’s capitulation is widely hailed by many who have followed the weeklong protests in the capital city Nairobi and other major centres across the country that had by Tuesday led to the death of at least seven people.
Up to early on Wednesday, the mood in Kenya was that the protests would continue if the presidency decided to go ahead with the tax hikes stipulated in the finance bill.
William Ruto, 57, has been president of Kenya, an East African country of about 48 million people, since September 13, 2022.
