President Ruto, after appointing the first 11 ministers of the new government (no less than 4 were retrenched and 1 promoted to deputy minister) and receiving more criticism and invective via social media from Generation Z, decided that ‘every limit has a patience’, as Totò used to say, declaring that he had listened to the young people enough and that he wanted to go straight for the good of the country.
"I abandoned the finance bill, I called them to come to the table and talk to me, they refused and asked me to go to X, I went but they did not show up. I gave everyone a chance to say what they wanted, but it cannot continue like this, the country is more important than any group of people, we must be united as a nation and protect our nation. We will stop the chaos because Kenya is a democracy and we want a stable nation When it is too much and too much'.
So spoke Zakayo, as Ruto is called by the young activists, with obvious reference to Zacchaeus, the biblical tax collector.
Generation Z, by the voice and ‘reposts’ of its best-known exponents, such as Boniface Mwangi, who has more than 2 million followers, or journalist John Allan Namu, influencer Hanifa Adan, musician-activist Kasmuel McOure and many others, did not shy away from a response: ‘we will march on Tuesday for the liberation of Kenya from this government, those who do not want to take to the streets, display a Kenyan flag at the window,’ they wrote, adding that what they want is not a new government with the same faces and the same corruption, but the dissolution of parliament and new elections.
Tomorrow's demonstration, at this point, becomes a turning point. What does it mean for Ruto to ‘go straight’, when already to listen to the youth, the police have fired live bullets, kidnapped dozens of youth, arrested more than 1100 people and killed more than 50 demonstrators? How will the young people react to any drastic choices by the government, regardless of their demands?