“I concede and therefore I will not sign the 2024 finance bill and it shall subsequently be withdrawn,” Ruto told a press briefing, adding: “The people have spoken.”
The government plan to raise taxes to pay off Kenya’s spiralling national debt sparked protests that turned violent on Tuesday. The state-funded Kenya National Commission on Human Rights said it had recorded 22 deaths and 300 injured victims.
“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 And therefore, I will not sign the 2024 finance bill, and it shall subsequently be withdrawn,” he said in a televised address.
Ruto said he would now start a dialogue with Kenyan youth, without going into details, and work on austerity measures – starting with cuts to the budget of the presidency – to make up the difference in the country’s finances.
The move will be seen as a major victory for a week-old protest movement that grew from online condemnations of tax increases into mass rallies demanding a political overhaul, in the most serious crisis of Ruto’s two-year-old presidency.
Ruto’s cash-strapped government said the increases were needed to service the country’s massive debt of some 10 trillion shillings ($78 billion), equal to roughly 70 percent of Kenya’s GDP.
Competing demands
Ruto’s announcement may see off the immediate threat of more unrest, but the Kenyan president is still caught between the competing demands of his hard-pressed citizens and of lenders such as the IMF, which is urging the government to cut deficits to obtain more financing.
On Tuesday, police opened fire on crowds who massed around parliament and later broke into the assembly’s compound, minutes after lawmakers had voted through the tax measures and sent them on to the president.
Source 24
