Protesters during anti-Finance Bill demonstrations on Kimathi Street, Nairobi on June 18, 2024.
President William Ruto has ended up being the biggest beneficiary of Gen Z’s protests that started as opposition to the Finance Bill 2024 before they degenerated into violence, pundits now concur.
Among the benefits that the demos have thrown Ruto’s way is the opportunity to escape a rebelling Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua who has of late been perceived to attempt to take the government hostage by demanding equitable benefit for Mt Kenya region through one man one vote one shilling mantra.
Mr Gachagua was also on Thursday accused by Mathira MP Eric Wamumbi as a man who has been pressurising elected leaders in the Mountain region to rebel against the president and instead start strategising on how to have him kicked out of power in 2027.
“I am grateful for the way he has held my hand through my political and social life, but our point of departure was when he started telling me to join the bandwagon of sabotaging the very government we owned and with a dominant cabinet presence in his plot of seeking individual benefits in 2027,” Mr Wamumbi told Inooro TV.
National stability
Other cited benefits that the protests gave the president include making it possible to bring opposition chief Raila Odinga close to him for national stability, affording him the venture to engage with the Gen Z’s on their X space and discover the road towards cleansing himself and his government from the unpopularity that led to public anger.
Embakasi East MP Babu Owino told Nation.Africa that “it never takes long for even the mediocre to realise that Odinga is a true son of this nation whose charm pacifies even the most threatening tides…for the sake of stability and cohesiveness, Odinga is more needed by the country that he needs it”.
He said it is only those living in denial who will be reluctant to appreciate the huge advantage this government has gained by accepting to take cause from Mr Odinga to escape the devastation of the youthful protests.
“Though the protests started with an express aim of derailing him and his government where there were even calls to occupy State House in a bid to force him to quit, it is amazing how he has turned things around and made the whole pressure to be his survival in the storm,” said university don and analyst, Prof Macharia Munene.
He said the protests brought to the fore evidence that the draconian Finance Bill 2024 was a prescription of the International Monetary Fund that the president was finding hard to resist “but once the protests were rolled out, he not only got the opportunity to drop it in its entirety but also got the chance to campaign and endear himself as a man who could listen to the public ad act especially by dissolving the cabinet”.
The don said the demos have given the President a chance to prove he is not a lame-duck executive who only takes advice from those who voted for him; and that he can be a national leader with the guts to bite the bullet for the sovereign power to have its way.
Munene said the protests have ended up freeing the President from the political prison that he had found himself in after his win in the August 9, 2022 General Election.
“The President had come into power with a slim win but with allies who had started to make it clear that this was a shareholding government. At every turn, Mt Kenya for example through Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua would keep on reminding him he received 87 per cent of the Gikuyu, Embu and Meru Association (Gema) voting bloc which translated to 47 per cent of his authority,” he said.
Nairobi Senator Mr Edwin Sifuna said, “The youths have given the president acres of space to do what is right, shed the bad image and realise that sovereign power can never remain stifled since it fights for space regardless of what idiocy is involved in insisting on doing the wrong thing”.
Mr Munene now feels that the youth-led protests have helped the President break from this prison “and he can now afford to reconstitute his Cabinet after he dissolved it on Thursday, without feeling indebted to politics of shareholders”.
Indeed, Kikuyu Council of Elders Chairman Mr Wachira Kiago on Thursday said Mount Kenya region should abandon the stance of making it appear as if President Ruto is theirs to control “rather should embrace nationalism that sees the motherland as supreme and which must get competent workers to alleviate quality of living and bring prosperity for all”.
Nairobi Woman Rep Esther Passaris told Nation.Africa on Thursday that “it is a huge sigh of relief for the President to finally find his rightful position in his government courtesy of the country’s youngsters who came out to cut off the nonsense of vote blocks control”.
She said that “the President now has a huge opportunity to form a government that captures nationalism and makes the country a home for equal opportunity as well as throw under the bus all those who have driven him down the road of ruins”.
Migori Senator Mr Eddy Oketch said: “The President has now been handed a fresh mandate to do what is right and embrace national dialogue instead of relying on sycophantic praise and worship teams around him as they siphon the life out of the economy through the cutting of deals”.
Former Presidential aspirant Mr Peter Kenneth said: “The President should now grab the opportunity that the Gen Zs have handed him to capitalise fully on pursuits that benefit all without fear of favour”.
