Today is a day that could be the final one. Nothing is sacred. Nothing is holy and nothing cannot be touched. Especially, when the people are tired, fatigued and lack any sort of proper results from their government. A government that is preoccupied with eating, living lavish and not delivering sufficient services to the population.
The Kenyan people are tired of years and decades of lacking service delivery from the government. The Executive, the cabinet and the high-ranking officials haven’t delivered. They have found ways of siphoning funds and eating of the plate of others. That’s what they have been preoccupied in doing. It is what the state has become, and the leaders are so accustomed to it.
We can understand the tiredness and anger, the frustration, and the blatant voices of discontent after what they have been through. We have seen no changes and just empty promises. The state has offered and said it would make a difference. However, it never comes and never reforms itself. Only ensures enrichment of the high-ranking officials who are gaining and gaining on end.
The acts of Parliament to push through the Finance Bill of 2024 and the voting of deployment of Kenyan Defence Forces (KDF) on the streets this week. It only shows what the representatives, the MPs and the Cabinet Secretaries are up too. The same with Musalia Mudavadi and Moses Wetangula. The whole leadership surrounding Ruto is rotten to the core. The system is made to be indifference and be for one elite. That’s why they don’t mind the cost on others. If you look at the he Appropriation Bill 2024, you see more of the same. That’s why the regime needed more taxation to pay for the lavish spending on itself and it’s allies.
Former President Ruto can today show heart and allow the demonstrators to show their emotions. The state should allow the citizens to voice their dissenting voices. They need to be able to go and walk around. Harambee house or anywhere for that matter. They should be allowed to go to State House(s) or State Lodges. They should be able to protest at government buildings and government institutions. Those buildings and entities are there to serve them and be there for them. If they cannot go there or protest around it. Then something is wrong with the state itself. They should allow to enter and be around them. It is theirs to begin with and the former President isn’t the owner of the Harambee house. No, the current custodian of it is there on behalf of the protesting civilians. That is something the former President has to get accustomed with.
Now the protesters can protest against the abduction of citizens, activists and people who has participated in previous demonstrations. The protestors can protest the lives who was taken and remember their sacrifice. The protestors can protest the need for health care and nourishment for all the ones that has been injured in the previous protests. They can protest that the state isn’t a military one and neither a police state. No, they have a right to assemble and protest the state without fear, intimidation and without lethal violence from the state.
Ruto and his cronies has forgotten that fact. The leadership of the security organizations and the monopoly of violence come from the high command. They are the ones that starts and uses brutality to quell protests. That’s orders from the state and from His Excellency himself. A man who wants this to end, but the protesters wants this to be his end.
It is time for Ruto to read the room. The usage of the state as a slush-fund and eating are over. The same should the political elite surrounding him see as well. We have seen this happen again and again. The story is never ending.
The protests now are a sign of change, a sign of that the tide is turning. The people had enough. The lies of Ruto cannot save him nor his government. That ship has sailed. The deaths, the extra judicial killings, the political prisoners, prisoners of conscience and abducted are all victims to the regime that thinks it is above them. This is why Ruto should have let go already, but we know he won’t do that. He hopes he can stand tall and overcome this. But it seems like this time around.
There will be no new normal tomorrow. The pressure is on and it haven’t stopped. Peace.
MinBane 