Macron & Ruto, Part Two

Dark clouds gather over Paris and Nairobi as the administrations of France’s President Macron and Kenya’s William Ruto become increasingly authoritarian. Noé Michalon and Syo Ivia take up the story…

A growing accountability deficit

The bypassing of intermediary bodies and counterpowers heightened the sense of injustice and impunity in both countries. Shortly before the Yellow Vests movement began, a parliamentary committee set up to investigate Macron’s private bodyguard who had been accused of beating up demonstrators was rapidly scuttled by the majority’s heavyweights. They ensured that no report would be released by the committee, which led to the less powerful opposition-controlled Senate setting up its own committee. The affair led to the resignation of the minister for internal affairs Gérard Collomb in October 2018, just weeks before the beginning of the Yellow Vests protests.

Other scandals also rocked the French cabinet before the protest movement began. François Bayrou, the minister for justice and one of the rare political heavyweights in the Macron administration, resigned in June 2017, less than two months after his appointment, following accusations of misuse of European funds for the benefit of his party. The then minister for public finance, Gérald Darmanin, who was to become minister for internal affairs in 2020, was accused of rape and sexual harassment in 2017 but was cleared of the accusations in 2024.

In May 2018, Macron’s chief of staff, the all-powerful secretary general of the Elysée, Alexis Kohler was also investigated for a potential conflict of interest concerning decisions he may have influenced regarding his previous employer. In September 2018, the minister for sports, former fencing champion Laura Flessel also resigned “for personal reasons”, shortly before an investigation was announced concerning potential undeclared revenues. The resignation in September 2018 of the then massively popular minister for environment, Nicolas Hulot, who publicly denounced the lack of progress in the government’s environmental policies, added to the criticism facing the administration.

Similarly, Ruto’s administration also faced political scandals in the months preceding the June 2024 movement, which also generalised an atmosphere of impunity. Then Cabinet Secretary (minister) for agriculture, Mithika Linturi was criticised for subsidising imports of substandard fertiliser, which he initially denied. Despite the public uproar regarding the matter (it is worth noting that Ruto’s main campaign promise was agricultural development), Linturi refused to resign and the parliamentary committee voted against his impeachment, fuelling the defiance towards the National Assembly. At the same time, the health sector also faced a crisis of significant magnitude, with medical personnel demonstrating and striking for eight straight weeks against a plan to reduce the salary of interns by 80%, and making demands that a 2017 agreement be implemented. Health Cabinet Secretary Susan Nakhumicha faced multiple calls to resign and a motion of impeachment was filed against her at the National Assembly.

Nakhumicha’s education counterpart, Ezekiel Machogu, also became increasingly unpopular for failing to postpone the reopening of schools in April following devastating floods that killed more than 300 people across the country. Machogu ended up announcing the measure at 1 a.m. the night before schools were due to reopen. Other scandals that need to be mentioned include the repeated nationwide power blackouts the country has experienced since August 2023, which drew criticism for the Energy CS, Davis Chirchir, a close ally of the president. The unprecedented outages lasted for hours and did not spare crucial infrastructure such as hospitals and airports. The outages came in the wake of other controversies linked to the energy and petroleum sector, such as the mysterious oil shipment that arrived in Mombasa in October 2023 whose funding was unclear and whose ownership was claimed by a little-known businesswoman, Anne Njeri, who was accused of being a proxy for more powerful actors. Calls by the opposition and civil society organisations for the resignation of those involved in these scandals went unanswered: the most controversial CSs were sacked after the June 2024 demonstrations in a cabinet reshuffle that saw five members of the opposition join the executive.

Apart from the scandals, the arrogance of government officials also fuelled the wrath of protesters in both Kenya and France. Macron’s controversial declarations were often recalled by the Yellow Vests, such as his advice to a job seeker to just “cross the road” and find work, or his heated arguments with factory workers who were told “to work” to buy themselves a suit like the one the then minister for economy was wearing that day in 2016. Some of his ministers also had their fair share of backlash, such as interior minister Christophe Castaner, who was seen kissing a young woman that was not his wife in a nightclub in March 2019, on the evening following a particularly tense day of demonstrations.

In early July 2024, Ruto had himself to apologise for the “arrogance and opulence” of the ruling class that the demonstrators rejected.

The signs of opulence included the use of high-end cars and helicopters to attend functions, which became an even more burning topic following the death of the country’s Chief of Defence Forces in a chopper accident in April. In addition to raising doubts about the army’s procurement policies, the crash was explained by the Defence CS to be the result of undue use by politicians of military helicopters at the expense of military leaders, left with lower-tier aircraft. The figure of David Ndii, the presidency’s chief economist, also became one of the most rejected and targeted by the demonstrators whom he had labelled “digital w*nkers” at the beginning of the movement. Some of his comments also caused outrage for their lack of compassion, such as the harrowing “people die all the time” comment he posted to say that floods would be “the new normal”.

As their policies undermined intermediary bodies, both Macron and Ruto tried to find support in alternative spheres. Macron redirected his attention towards the mayors of the 35,000 city councils of the country, who are among the most respected elected leaders in the country. This last-minute rapprochement was not successful, however. When the Yellow Vests crisis started, mayors were deploring a top-down, centralised decision-making process where most policies were designed in Paris with little consultation. Moreover, the crisis started just months after a brutal decrease of the budget allocated to local governments, which contributed to undermining local public services, and fuelled the protests.

For his part, Ruto sought advice and support from traditional chiefs. Shortly after 25^th June demonstrations, Africa Intelligence (of which one of the authors of this story is a correspondent) revealed that Ruto had travelled to the rural West Pokot County to meet with Pokot elders. Shortly thereafter, he met with elders of the Talai – a clan of the Kalenjins, William Ruto’s community – who are believed to wield mystical powers and whose blessing has been essential to all the Kenyan presidents since the country’s independence. Both groups performed rituals to protect the Head of State, and gave him advice that he followed, such as the dissolution of the cabinet and the opening of dialogue with the protesters. Since July, Ruto has embarked on a nationwide series of town hall meetings, applying a blueprint similar to Macron’s during the Yellow Vests crisis.

Same policies produce the same results

The parallels between France and Kenya, and between Macron and Ruto, lead us to question what fundamental trends brought both countries to experience quite similar crises, to which both leaders responded in a similar way. The two men are close: in less than two years as counterparts, they have met at least six times, the latest meeting being on 14^th June 2024 at the G7 summit in Italy, even as the movement against the Finance Bill was already gaining momentum. Political sources also confided that a certain level of communication occurred between officials from the two administrations – at an unspecified level, however – as the Kenyan movement was getting underway. When asked by a Nation journalist about the Kenyan crisis at a function for the opening of the Olympics in July 2024, Macron expressed his hope that the “demonstrations will end soon”. For such a popular event, Ruto’s absence at the Paris Olympics was noticeable, and also suggests some exchanges between the two administrations to explain the Kenyan president’s cancellation of his trip; Ruto did not officially leave the country during the duration of the crisis.

Stronger forces are at play, however. Besides the similarities in their character and political ethos, the two presidents have implemented policies that mostly follow the neoliberal playbook, leading to a reduction of public expenditure, with priority being accorded to the private sector.

In the same way that Ruto praised the figure of the Kenyan “hustler” and promised to facilitate their endeavour through the “Hustler Fund”, Macron’s poster child was the self-entrepreneur, labelled “start-upper”. During the time Macron was minister for the economy, some of his landmark policies were aimed at encouraging job seekers to found their own companies with an “auto-entrepreneur” (self-entrepreneur) status, which is criticised by the left for its precariousness. The promoter of France as a “startup nation”, Macron’s measures accelerated the “uberisation” of the economy by shrinking the public benefits job seekers are entitled to and nudging them into accepting part-time jobs with little social protection.

The same neoliberal dynamics pushed both the French and Kenyan administrations to significantly reduce the capacity of the state, conceding lower or stable tax rates to the higher classes in a context of growing inequalities. At the peak of the Yellow Vests crisis, Macron was planning to privatise the state-owned Aéroports de Paris company that generates hundreds of millions of euros in yearly profits, as well as the country’s lottery agency (La Française des Jeux), which is also significantly profitable. These plans were deeply unpopular – a petition gathering a million signatures asked for their withdrawal – and were finally abandoned.

Setting aside a series of more temporary social policies during COVID-19, other measures, including the attempt to push the minimum retirement age to 64 years, were also inspired by this priority to stabilise social expenditure. To match his campaign promise of saving up to €60 billion during his term, Macron’s first budget, in 2017, saw an unprecedented level of tax cuts for the richest households coupled with a drastic reduction of public expenditure, despite a concerning social crisis. These austerity measures did not concern the French presidency, however, whose budget skyrocketed in 2018 due to Macron’s multiple travels abroad and other more controversial expenses, like the decomposing First Lady’s hairdressing costs. These budgetary priorities mirror Ruto’s presidency.

While he claimed to be constrained by a growing debt servicing burden, the State House budget went into overdraft by KSh900 million (US$7 million) in 2024, partly due to multiple travels worldwide and the costly refurbishment and extension plans of the presidential residences across the country. At the same time, social safety nets, such as subsidies on fuel and unga (maize flour) were sharply reduced or abolished, while dozens of state corporations were slated to be privatised. Strongly defended by Ruto and his advisers, this policy also followed the guidelines and the so-called good practices of multilateral lenders such as the IMF, which greenlit the controversial Finance Bill 2024 shortly before its removal and soon after reaching an agreement for new funding. While he defined his policy as a sovereign choice, Ruto paradoxically accused the movement against his government of being supported by external forces, such as the American Ford Foundation – which had provided funding for some civil society organisations supporting the demonstrations. Ruto’s spokesperson also blamed unnamed “foreign powers” that would be disapproving of Kenya’s support for Ukraine.

Conclusion

Behind these neoliberal injunctions lies a certain vision of societies focused on an individualistic, rather than a holistic, approach. The onus is put on one’s personal responsibility – glorified through “hustler” or “startup nation” narratives – to navigate an increasingly deregulated environment where unequal opportunities are justified as the result of unequal entrepreneurial talent.

Most intermediary bodies that are perceived as an expression of the masses, such as trade unions and political parties, tend to be ignored or neutralised through co-optation.

In France as in Kenya, political parties became mere vehicles for the ambitions of leaders embarked on a narrative focusing on the exceptionality of their person, obfuscating most notions of social classes and groups.

Combined with growing inequalities and policies reducing the size of government and social spending, the neglect or co-optation of intermediary bodies brought millions of demonstrators to the streets without the support of any external forces. The logic at work is not exclusively French and Kenyan; it is global. The removal of intermediary bodies provides relief to the governing elites, giving them a sense of omnipotence when it comes to implementing their policies. But that relief is temporary: we are witnessing more and more unexpected, massive, organic and sweeping social movements across the world, be it in Nigeria, Sri Lanka or Bangladesh. The last two cases set a defining precedent: disconnected ruling elites were chased out of power.

@ Noé Michalon and Syo Ivia 2024
 

AW Kamau 2024