Barely a week after the Kenyan president left the G7 convention in which he pontificated concerning democracy and championed for IMF and the World Bank to avail fair finances for Africans, Mr. Ruto has returned to face widespread protests against his fiscal budget marked by over taxation. As protests intensified, The IMF and World Bank trended on the Twitter X space on 21st June 2024 as Kenyans condemned the colonial institutions, but the president seems interested in continuing dealing with such bodies.
Yesterday’s Slave traders, and Colonizers as today’s “Democrats”
It is customary for western leaders and their allies to present their countries as ‘democracies’ but the extent to which they respect the views and interests of their populace can be questioned, for instance, considering how French and German leaders deplored their populaces after losing the recent European elections (here, here), in how Canadian PM used extreme force to dismantle the Freedom Convoy, and also how the US Joe Biden referred to MAGA (Make America Great Again) republicans as extremists (here). Away from westerner’s undemocratic attitude towards their citizens, the group historically does anything for its financial interests, including slavery, colonialism, invading others, and provoking wars across the world, practices that cannot be democratic. The group recently concluded the G7 meeting between 13th and 15th June 2024, in which participants brandished their supposed democratic ideals and also pushed their twisted views on the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza conflicts. This arrogant group that represents 10% of the global population attempts to rule the entire world, such that the politico article (here) spun a narrative that the G7 is needed to give the world leadership, despite the same stating that the group’s leaders are extremely unpopular Lame Ducks. These ducks invited Kenya’s president, whose speech at the event may mislead some to think he cares for Kenya and Africa, but the reality is that he may be a part of the problem. He insists that the Western financial institutions should lower interest on loans to Africans, which conceals the real problem of corruption that gets some of these countries in debt problems. Ruto and the former president took many irresponsible loans that were stolen, and both may be in implicit partnership with western financial institutions to enslave Africans, as will be illustrated later.
Western Media Favors Him, why?
President Ruto is benefiting from western hypocrisy as the protests that begun on 18th June, which may continue for weeks, have been meticulously concealed by the western media, by 22nd June 2024 (here). By midday 21st June 2024, Aljazeera reported that 200 had been injured including 5 by gunshot wounds and one of them bled to death, while 100 people had been detained in the protests, which reveals their magnitude. It seems such was not something that the western media would cover, or even the president would address the nation about. The president, as The West’s darling, sees no need to serve his country as hard as he prioritizes showing up in every event he is invited in while imploring on Kenyans to embrace austerity measures. In just a month, he had visited the US, from 19th May (here), South Korea from 3rd June (here), and Italy from 15th June 2024 (here). While abroad, he favors issuing platitudes on “the need to defend democracy”, which he does not seem to think relates to serving his country’s interest first. For instance, on the first and the last trips listed above, he stated that Africans should have access to cheaper loans from western financial institutions; the World Bank and IMF, which exist primarily to exploit the global south (here), and ignored cheaper alternatives (here). He even proposed that Africa be given Concession Loans from colonial institutions under Washington consensus, and seems to have completely closed his mind off, from eastern alternatives to the IMF and World Bank, which are giving fairer developmental loans. His insistence does not serve his country, and is hence not democratic.
IMF and World Bank
It is puzzling why president Ruto insists on IMF and World Bank loans, which Kenyans do not favor. These institutions were trending on Twitter X space on Friday, 21st June 2021, as Kenyans deplored their colonial tendencies, but the president sticks to them while complaining that they are unfair, suggesting he could have motivations that are not easy to publically disclose. His behavior calls for further review. The researcher cannot ignore the possibility of the presence of underhand relations between the government and these institutions, suggested by how the president has been quick to state that Kenya is in a debt crisis, but he has not been addressing how the crisis developed. The current debt situation can be blamed squarely on the incompetence of the current and the former presidents. Huge debts were taken by the former administration (in which the current president was the deputy president), which was marred by corruption scandals that resulted in the loss of billions of public moneys including loans. The most notable of such borrowing and subsequent embezzlement related to 200 million dollars that was raised through a Eurobond, and the Kenya’s Auditor General then stated that the amount was stolen while it was still in the US (here). Other scandals during the regime were in the health sectors involving imports of prefabricated health clinics, in which millions of dollars were also stolen. Likewise, sums borrowed under the IMFs Special Drawing Rights during the Covid-19 were also misappropriated (here). Therefore, the loans taken by the Kenyan government were stolen by politicians in collaboration with their western masters, which makes the president’s insistence on debt relief to look like a way of precluding investigation into why the country is in debt in the first place, in a process that would get him and the rest in the former regime criminally liable.
There is more than meets the eye in president Ruto’s ongoing insistence that the country be granted debt relief and his reluctance to leave colonial western financial institutions. For instance, the leaks dubbed Pandora Papers by the western-based International Consortium of Journalist revealed that Kenya’s former president’s family had stashed abroad an amount equivalent to 24 billion USD over a period of 5 years of his second term (here). The public will never know where this amount came from, and the politician’s family cannot explain the source of such obscene sums. The only logical conclusion is that African political have been coordinating with western institutions to fleece their populace, but openly posing as ‘democrats’ fighting neocolonialism. These daytime self-styled democrats and crusaders of ‘African’s’ interest moonlight as thieves stealing and plundering their populace.
Simon Chege Ndiritu, is a political observer and research analyst from Africa, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
