KENYA’s President William Ruto has said he will not sign a finance bill that led protesters to storm Parliament in anger over rising costs, adding that the bill containing tax hikes would “be withdrawn”.
“I concede and therefore I will not sign the 2024 finance bill and it shall subsequently be withdrawn,” Ruto said in a televised address on Wednesday. “The people have spoken.”
Ruto said he would now start a dialogue with Kenyan young people, 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.
His comments came after dozens of people were reported killed and scores more wounded as police broke up rallies against the contentious bill.
The move will be seen as a major victory for the week-old protest movement that grew from online condemnations of the proposed tax increases into mass rallies demanding a political overhaul, in the most serious crisis of Ruto’s two-year-old presidency.
Shortly before Ruto’s address, activists called for new protests in Kenya. They called on demonstrators to return “peacefully” to the streets to honour those killed.
“You cannot kill all of us. Tomorrow we march peacefully again as we wear white, for all our fallen people,” Hanifa Adan, a prominent organiser of the youth-led demonstrations, posted on X. “You will not be forgotten!
Al Jazeera’s Malcolm Webb, reporting from Nairobi, said some of the protest organisers as well as others have met Ruto’s speech “with a great deal of skepticism”.
“Many say that they’ll still go to the streets on Thursday as planned. There’s clearly still a great deal of mistrust,” Webb said.
“We just spoke to one of Kenya’s leading lawyers, he represents a political opposition, he’s explained that Ruto’s speech … communicates his position on the bill, but constitutionally, it doesn’t amount to anything,” he said.
For the president to turn around this process, he would have to “communicate with a memorandum to parliament to officially reject the bill”, Webb said, adding that people are waiting to assess Ruto’s next steps.
