Ruto to open global summit today amid anti-State protest

President William Ruto is today set to preside over a two-day high-profile peace meeting amid a deadly wave of anti-government protests sweeping across the country.

Dubbed Global Peace Leadership Conference, the meeting is attended by renowned leaders including Azimio la Umoja leader Raila Odinga, former Nigeria President Olegusen Obasanjo and his former Liberian counterpart Ellen Sirleaf Johnson.

The conference comes at a time when the country is torn at the middle pitting President Ruto and his allies and the youth who yesterday staged a mega protest throughout the country to oppose 2024 finance bill.

Yesterday, the country witnessed a rare spectacle as the Parliament Square was turned into a war zone the whole of afternoon.

At some point, the protestors overpowered police managed to break into Parliament, breaking furniture and eating food prepared for MPs at the five-star cafeteria. They also set part of Parliament on fire.

At the evening, the Senate chambers passages were a total ruin with flags of the 47 counties having plucked from their stand while the veranda was littered with broken glass.

As the day progressed the number of protestors continued to increase as they forced their way towards Nairobi Central Business District to join their counterparts in Parliament.

They chanted ‘Ruto must go’ and blew vuvuzelas, creating a scene that brought back memories of the 2007 general elections.

Major streets were littered with stones and coloured pink by water pumped from police water canons to disperse the surging protestors.

At 4pm, protestors set City Hall on fire where a police water canon was deployed to extinguish it with the pink coloured water.

Injured protesters

In the neighbouring Holy Family Minor Basilica, medics set up a makeshift hospital to attend to injured protestors.

“We have received patients with serious wounds on their limbs, while some are being evacuated to Kenyatta National Hospital. We are here to give humanitarian assistance and we are not any way involved in the antagonism. We have so far received of 30 patients where 10 are critically injured,” a medical officer at the catholic church said. Those who were demonstrating appeared to have been irked by the passing of the bill they were protesting against early morning where 195 MPs voted to pass the amendments while only 105 opposed them.

Among the protestors who were caught up in the fumes of the choking teargas is former US President Barack Obama’s sister, Ouma Obama who criticised the government for ignoring the voice of the youth in the crafting of the controversial 2024 Finance Bill.

Additionally, she protested the police brutality meted on young Kenyans who had turned in their numbers to oppose the over-taxation measures in the bill.

“How can you teargas your own people? Listen to them. They are the future, 80 per cent of the future and if they decide to turn on you, they can and that is what they’re doing now,” Auma said.

Similar scenes were replicated in major towns as youthful protestors laid siege to protest the punitive finance bill.

In this bill, the government seeks to expand its revenue base and collect Sh2.9 trillion locally to service its 2024/25 financial year budget that will cost Sh3.92 trillion to implement.