Machakos Deputy Governor Francis Mwangangi has counselled President William Ruto on three priority steps that he should adopt to get out of the current crisis that his government has found itself in.

Mwangangi says that apart from listening and taking action on some of the issues that the youth have raised, President Ruto should also refrain from making promises that he cannot implement. “The President should do some soul searching and ask himself where the rain started beating him hardly two years since his election as President. This is a man who won the presidency on a platform of popularity, particularly among the youth,” says the Machakos county deputy boss.

He says President Ruto needs to take urgent remedial measures to redeem his fast waning popularity and public confidence and trust.

As a first step towards addressing the problems being raised, Mwangangi suggests that President Ruto identifies the issues being raised, such as corruption, wastefulness, police brutality and abductions, tribalism and nepotism, high cost of life and unemployment and come up with specific solutions to each of them.

Addressing issues

He says the President must drop his usual populism and militaristic way of addressing issues and come up with a realistic approach.

“He should separate populism from the reality and be able to candidly engage on what his government can achieve and what cannot be achieved, as well as give the time frame within which the doable can be implemented,” Mwangangi opines.

He says that some of the demands being pushed by Generation Z had long been agitated by the Azimio la Umoja but the President had ignored them. Mwangangi says the apparent countrywide protests were only triggered by the contentious Finance Bill 2024 after days of simmering anger and tension among members of the public.

The building tension, he says, was as a result of the tendency by the Kenya Kwanza administration to bulldoze certain policies such as the Housing levy, Social Health Insurance (SHI) and the 2023 Finance Bill against the public wishes. “If he can reflect well, Kenyans had voiced opposition to all these issues, but his government went ahead to push them down the throats of Kenyans.