How unrelenting youth protesters forced once in two-decades move

Anti-riot police officers rough up one of the youths during the country-wide anti-tax protests on June 2, 2024. [Denish Ochieng, Standard]

It is his reluctance that mostly stood out as he faced pressure for action by Kenya's youngest adults.

Sacking Cabinet Secretaries, President William Ruto said during an X Space engagement, was not as easy as the Gen Z and Millennial protesters imagined.

When it came down to it, however, the President held nothing back, sacking all but one CS, Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi.

But as he made the move, only witnessed once before in the country's history, his reluctance before withdrawing the Finance Bill, 2024 lingered.

His Cabinet had done a good job in transforming the economy, had kept the nation stable and implemented his flagship Hustler Fund project, President Ruto belaboured the point.

"Even with the progress we have made, I am acutely aware that the people of Kenya have high expectations of me," he conceded, before announcing the move many now term as "bold".

"He has made the changes very reluctantly. He was strained to demonstrate that the government is working," noted political scientist Philip Nying'uro.

Ruto has been under pressure to act against "corrupt and incompetent" officials, resulting in the move last taken in 2005 by President Mwai Kibaki after the government side lost a referendum on a new constitution.

Nearly two decades later, Ruto finds himself in a similarly difficult situation. He is smarting from political losses, the biggest being the loss of young masses on whose backs he rode to the presidency in 2022.

For weeks, Gen Zs and Millennials have braved live bullet-firing, tear gas-hurling and baton-wielding police officers, and abductions, to stage protests on a never-before-seen scale.

Their first victory was the withdrawal of the unpopular Finance Bill, which sought to introduce several new taxes.

Then he strung them along by implementing their demands in small portions, but avoiding the more radical ones, including dissolving the Cabinet. Until yesterday.

"Upon reflection, listening keenly to what the people have said and after a holistic appraisal of the performance of my Cabinet and its achievements and challenges, I have... decided to dismiss with immediate effect all the Cabinet Secretaries and the Attorney General," Ruto announced at State House, Nairobi, yesterday.

Although public pressure has previously achieved some reforms, never before has it forced the Head of State to sack an entire Cabinet. Presidents have preferred to let go of one or, at most, a few. The more common approach is a reshuffle.

As the nation processes the unprecedented event, observers agree that Ruto's move was mostly down to the Gen Z siege.

"To him the Cabinet was working just fine and that is why he started with the justifications. He essentially told the country that 'you forced this on me'," said Prof Nying'uro, who teaches at the University of Nairobi.

Development studies professor Winnie Mitullah said the protests gave the President the chance to act on his reservations about some CSs

"There are those who could have been retained but how do you fire some and keep others?" Prof Mitullah posed.

Ruto has previously talked about the incompetence of some of his officials.

"There are many contradictions in the President's decision. If the Cabinet is not working then he is not working," Prof Mitullah observed.

Nying'uro thinks retaining Mudavadi is also a contradiction.

"Who is he supervising now? If the Cabinet is not working, then the Prime Cabinet Secretary shoulders some responsibility," said Prof Nying'uro.

Prof Mitullah says the task ahead is tougher given the expectations of Kenyans on the next Cabinet.