For days, Kenya’s President, William Ruto, has looked on as violent protestors disrupt businesses and destroy property across major towns in the country, protesting against the financial bill. The protests peaked on Tuesday, with protestors vandalizing property at the country’s parliament and burning part of it.
After entering a deal with President Joe Biden in May, making Kenya a United States of
America’s major non-NATO ally, Ruto, has been coerced to exercise idealistic approaches to dissent, which has put the country’s national security at stake.
However, the US’s idealistic approach to dissent is mere trickery, given the brutal response the US bestowed on its citizens when the imperialistic country faced similar circumstances.
On January 6, 2021, when protestors who were legally expressing their dissatisfaction with the US presidential election results stormed Capitol Hill as a joint session of Congress convened to certify the results, US Police and the National Guard responded with extreme force, killing several people and injuring hundreds.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other US law-enforcement agencies considered it an act of domestic terrorism, while other US politicians regarded the January 6th peaceful demonstration as an insurrection or attempted coup d’état.
In April 2024, President Biden defended the US Police’s brutal crackdown on peaceful protests by university students across the country who were demanding their president stop supporting Israel’s war against Palestinian children.
Biden said that both the right to free speech and the rule of law must be upheld, but violent protests are not protected.
“Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduation—none of this is a peaceful protest. Threatening people, intimidating people, and instilling fear in people is not a peaceful protest,” he said.
Surprisingly, this and more is what’s happening in Kenya, but Ruto has let it go on seemingly to please his allies who preach water and drink wine.
With Kenya’s economy already choking on debt, with a debt-to-Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio of 70.8 percent, actions to destabilise the economy cannot be a remedy to a proposal meant to reduce the country’s debt burden.
With due respect to Kenya’s democracy, acts of lawlessness shouldn’t be mistaken for freedom of expression and should be dealt with decisively.
