TAX PROPOSALS: Protesters take to the streets to demonstrate against the Finance Bill, in Mombasa, on Tuesday, June 19, 2024. Image: COURTESY

The phrase, ‘the will of the people’, repeatedly featured in the President-elect’s acceptance speech after being declared winner of the August 2022 general election. It was an assertion demonstrative of the supremacy of the people’s choice over any malicious machinations and illegitimate impositions. The people were grateful. The future seemed delightful. 

Yet almost 24 months later, what a different rhetoric now reigns. The will of the people has been constantly and mercilessly rebuffed by clearly clueless or worse pernicious policies. What’s laughable is that the very progenitors fumble on live TV when questioned about the spirit of the Finance Bill, 2024 proposals while others utter imbecilic justifications which even the most primitive cannot find imagine.

Dear Mr President, with all due respect, the Almighty God gave you sovereignty and greatness to lead the great people of Kenya. Let not your heart become arrogant and hardened with pride, lest you are deposed by God himself from your royal throne and stripped of the glory and majesty as it happened to the great King Nebuchadnezzar.

Listen to the voice of the people, the same voice that bestowed their trust on you. Vox Populi, Vox Dei - the voice of the people is the voice of God. 

Kenya is our beloved country. None of us would like it to descend into anarchy and become a failed state. But since the government is certainly hell-bent on ruining our present and future, the young people will have no other choice apart from vehemently and non-violently voicing their concerns, both online and offline. And if the youth-led protests on Tuesday are anything to go by, oh boy, then it will be very interesting to see what the future holds.

Lastly, I have a word from the Lord to the government-allied cronies characterised with unscalable pride and repeated chest thumping yet have no balls to call out the injustice so as not to lose their popularity and regularity of their pay checks: History will rightly judge you harshly. And since the language of the Bible is not foreign to you, I will paraphrase the Book of Esther to speak directly to you: 

“Do not think that because you are in the [government’s] house you alone of all the [Kenyans] will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the [Kenyans] will arise from another place, but you and your families will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your positions for such a time as this?” By JEFFERSON MWANGI, The Star