Kenyan President William Ruto has bowed to pressure and said he will not sign the controversial Finance Bill, 2024.
Mr Ruto’s surrender, at the cost of lives, came just hours before the a high court issued a restraining order against deployment of the army to the capital in the wake of protests that have gripped the East African nation.
He said the people have spoken.
“Listening keenly to the people of Kenya who have said loudly that they want nothing to do with this Finance Bill 2024, I concede and therefore I will not sign the 2024 Finance Bill and it shall subsequently be withdrawn,” Ruto said.
The contested Bill is expected to return to Parliament where the majority leader Kimani Ichungwa’h will formally withdraw it.
The draft law had stoked the fury of the youth under the so-called Gen-Z who, after days of peaceful protests, lost it and stormed the administrative headquarters of the nation.
They stripped Parliament bare and attacked other installations, including Uganda House that they set on fire, before heading to the presidential palace.
Here, they were stopped in their tracks after Ruto had ordered the military deployed to boost an overwhelmed police force.
The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, a state-funded rights organisation, said at least 22 people were killed in Tuesday’s protests in Kenya.
President Ruto further said his administration has worked hard and consistently so that the price of essential commodities like ‘unga’ has dropped from KSh240 to KSh100.
“We reduced the cost of fertiliser from Sh7,500 to Sh2,500. The Shilling has also strengthened against the Dollar,” he said.
Ruto said Kenya is on course to detangle itself from the debt burden that has hung around its neck for decades.
In a televised address to the nation from the State House, the President said for every KSh100 the government collects in taxes, KSh61 goes into paying off the country’s debt.
“We have paid Kenya’s Eurobond debt that was borrowed in 2014 of KShs2 billion dollars that has been hanging around our neck. We paid the last instalment of $500 million last week,” Ruto said.
Ruto said that given the sustained commitment to rid itself of the debt burden, the country’s debt obligation is today much less and more sustainable.
State House sources earlier told the Star that the Head of state has also declined to assent to the Bill.
