Kenyan President William Ruto mostly named holdovers from the cabinet he fired last week to a new administration intended to answer the complaints of young protesters.
In a televised broadcast, Ruto announced 11 appointments six from the previous cabinet with others to follow soon.
The mass termination last week was an admission to requests from youth-led protests that had proactively forced him to withdraw $2.7 billion in proposed tax hikes in the midst of the biggest crisis of his two-year administration.
The protests have brought about in excess of 50 deaths since mid-June, and numerous demonstrators are currently calling for the resignation of Ruto. Enormous dissents occurred again this week notwithstanding the president’s concessions.
Ruto re-appointed the ministers of interior, defence, environment and lands and changed the portfolios of two other ministers.
The appointee to be education minister, Julius Migos Ogamba, was the running mate of the outgoing education minister, Ezekiel Machogu, when Machogu stood unsuccessfully for governor of Kisii County in 2022, local media reports showed.
The nominees to be ministers of health, information, agriculture, water and education did not appear to have political backgrounds.
“I will be issuing next week a clear roadmap on the assignment that the new cabinet is going to have, with clear timelines and deliverables,” Ruto said.
Leading activists behind the dissents, which have no official leader and reject the whole political class as corrupt, immediately panned the appointments.
One of them, Hanifa Farsafi, posted the list of nominees on X with the word “REJECTED” stamped across it in red.
The dissents have left Ruto caught between pressure from lenders to settle high debts and a public faltering from increased living expenses. The government has proposed austerity measures to narrow the deficit brought about by shelving the proposed tax increament.
Kenyan news source outlets had before reported that some members of the political resistance were probably going to be named to Ruto’s new cabinet.
Protesters have gone against the idea of a unity government, saying an arrangement between rival alliances would just sustain a custom in Kenyan politics of leaders co-opting the resistance with jobs and perks while the population sees no benefits.
