‘The people have spoken’: Why did Kenya’s Ruto reject tax bill he pushed?

Western pressure likely made Ruto backtrack after deadly violence, but his credibility has been badly hit, say analysts.

Kenya’s President William Ruto on Wednesday evening rolled back controversial tax reforms that he had championed in the face of public opposition, after mass protests turned violent a day earlier, leaving 23 people dead, according to the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights.

“The people have spoken,” Ruto said in a press conference at around 4:30 pm local time (13:30 GMT), barely 24 hours before protesters vowed to again take to the streets. “I concede.”

The admission of defeat was rare for a politician not known to backtrack, and was a sharp about-turn from his speech less than a day earlier, when, after the violence, he had adopted a firm, almost threatening posture towards protesters. He had accused “treasonous” individuals of attempting “to undermine security and stability”. The president had also deployed the military against protesters, an unusually high-handed move, experts said.

The reversal in Ruto’s position on Wednesday has led to questions about what changed his mind, said analysts — even as a cloud hangs over his credibility, two years after he came to power promising a break for corruption and misgovernance.

“I don’t believe it is genuine, I think he is just buying time,” Willis Okumu, a senior researcher with the Pan-African think-tank Institute for Security Studies (ISS), told Al Jazeera. “I think he has been advised that this is politically damaging and most likely Western pressure has played a role. He needed to steady the ship after messing up.”