Macron & Ruto

The parallels between France and Kenya, and between Emmanuel Macron and William 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.

Five years apart, France (in 2018-19) and Kenya (in 2024), experienced spontaneous nationwide social movements, the magnitude of which led to major political crises. Through a powerful coordination and communication on social media, “leaderless” groups of demonstrators took to the streets of their countries’ main cities to oppose policies they denounced as antisocial.

While very different in their economies, demographics and political cultures, the two countries were faced with similar policies that led to similar phenomena. In both cases, freshly elected populist and neoliberal leaders bypassed or altered a set of intermediary bodies that ensure the interface between the rulers and the ruled. With fewer or no platforms on which they could convey their grievances, French and Kenyan demonstrators embarked on a new kind of mobilisation.

Quick summary of the events

On 17 November 2018, nearly 300,000 demonstrators occupied 3,000 different sites in France, organising mass blockades of roundabouts. They all wore the distinctive bright yellow vest every car owner is required by law to keep in their vehicle for emergencies. United by their motorist identity, they all voiced the same concern, repeated in the previous weeks on Facebook: they wanted Macron’s government to cancel a scheduled hike of a tax on petroleum products in a context of already high inflation. A majority of the demonstrators were from rural and semi-urban areas, where the lack of public transportation makes car ownership essential.

Even as Macron remained firm on the planned tax hike, demonstrations of varying size and intensity took place every Saturday. While roadblocks continued to be erected everywhere in the country, Paris became the centre of growing attention, with protesters taking to the capital’s symbolic Avenue des Champs Élysées – the “most expensive” street in the world – on 24 November and the following week. Borrowing from the language of theatre, the demonstrators labelled each of their protests as “Acts” – increasingly tense confrontations with the security forces that had been heavily deployed.

The 1st of December 2018 marked a turning point, with a series of outbreaks of violence on the Champs Élysées and the storming of the world-famous monument, the Arc de Triomphe. On that day, 263 people were injured, including 81 members of the security forces and 182 demonstrators, some critically wounded by rubber bullets. In Marseille, an 80-year-old woman was hit in the face by a teargas grenade while closing the window of her fourth-floor apartment. She passed away the following day, sparking a wave of emotion throughout the country. In the average-sized city of Le Puy-en-Velay, the préfecture – the main government building – was set on fire.

Freshly returned from a G20 summit in Argentina where he said he would “never accept violence”, Macron tasked his prime minister to summon the main political forces and the “representatives” of the Yellow Vests.

On 5 December, Macron cancelled the scheduled tax hike, contradicting his prime minister who had declared the day before that it would be “suspended” for six months along with other proposed increases. Coming after three weeks of protests and growing resentment due to the unprecedented levels of police violence, Macron’s decision was considered belated and the Gilets Jaunes mobilisations continued over the following weeks. The scope of demands grew to include calls for greater social justice and the reinstatement of a tax on wealth abolished by Macron shortly after he was elected. Other claims also focused on accountability, as demonstrators demanded reforms to allow for citizen-led referenda to impeach elected leaders. The next few days of mobilisation tested the government even further: it was revealed that for the December 8 demonstrations, a helicopter would be on the ready to fly the president out of the Elysée presidential palace should his safety be threatened.

Macron’s first official address since the beginning of the crisis took place two days later, on 10 December, where he announced a raft of further concessions – worth €10 billion to the Yellow Vests – including a bonus increase for workers on minimum wage. These measures did not suffice to appease the movement, which continued to mobilise hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in the first Saturdays of 2019. The continued police violence – which resulted in some demonstrators losing limbs or eyes due to injuries from rubber bullets – raised concerns from Amnesty International and the Council of Europe, while the United Nations called for a probe into the actions of the police. The force itself became increasingly targeted by some protesters, together with symbols of luxury such as Fouquet’s (the restaurant of choice of former president Nicolas Sarkozy, nicknamed “president of the rich”) which was set ablaze. The National Assembly also came under attack.

As the mobilisation continued into the first half of 2019, Macron embarked on a four-month nationwide tour – referred to as “the Great National Debate” – to engage with citizens. Millions of online and written submissions were also collected from citizens, a measure that echoed the cahiers de doléances (complaints books) that were set up by the waning French monarchy in the first months of the 1789 Revolution. As a figure widely rejected by the Yellow Vests, Macron’s initiative did not manage to fully tame the protesters’ claims, as they organised their own debates leading to proposals towards more social justice and accountability. After surviving at a lower scale, the movement, which had been gradually declining, came to an end in early 2020 with the lockdown and the regulations on public assemblies imposed by the government following the outbreak of COVID-19.

The above sequence of events presents glaring similarities with the social movement unfolding in Kenya since June prompted by the proposed Finance Bill 2024 which initially included a raft of tax hikes on essential commodities, including bread. Similar to France, an organic social movement quickly took shape to reject controversial tax increases in a context of high inflation. The Kenyan movement was championed by a variety of young demonstrators – some of whom belonged to Generation Z, the generation born between the mid-1990s and the early 2000s – who were not affiliated to any official structure. Both movements started without the backing of any political party nor trade union, which are usually key actors of social movements previously observed in both countries. A first march, on 18 June, gathered unusual crowds in Nairobi’s Central Business District, prompting Ruto to announce, on the evening of the same day, the removal of contentious dispositions contained in the proposed bill, such as planned increases in mobile money transfer fees, or VAT on bread.

As was the case in France, Kenyan protesters were not satisfied with this first concession, as the death of two protesters killed by the police on the first day and the injuries and abductions of dozens of others raised more concerns. The following week, protesters took to the streets across the country, gathering in front of centres of power such as the parliament in Nairobi – which was set on fire on 25 June – and came face to face with unprecedented levels of police violence. No less than 41 protesters died from live bullets on that day, while Ruto claimed the protests had been “hijacked” by “organised criminals”.

Ruto’s six-minute speech was devoid of any words of compassion for the victims of police violence, dismissing the demonstrations as “treasonous”. His address overshadowed the withdrawal of the Finance Bill the head of state announced the following day, surrounded by parliamentarians of his United Democratic Alliance. Following this initial success, Kenyan demonstrators broadened their discourse to include the fight against corruption and the abolition of symbols of financial mismanagement such as the well-funded Offices of the First Lady and the Second Lady whose combined annual budget is nearly US$10 million.

Following the withdrawal of the Finance Bill, further demonstrations, albeit less attended, focused on symbols such as Nairobi’s main airport, the object of a deal with Indian group Adani that raised concerns about the country’s sovereignty over key infrastructure. Akin to France’s Yellow Vests, Kenyan demonstrators also organised their support for victims of police violence, with a concert organised on 7 July in Nairobi’s Uhuru Park, and fundraisers for the injured or the families of the deceased.

Social media and new technologies have also played an instrumental role in the organisation and coordination of the Gen Z movement. The first critiques of the Finance Bill 2024 emerged on TikTok in May and early June 2024 before spilling over into X (formerly Twitter), where live conversations reached record levels of attendance of up to several hundreds of thousands of people. AI-powered tools were developed by activists to share key information regarding the political situation. For instance, a chatbox named CorruptPoliticiansGPT enabled users to get up-to-date information regarding Kenyan politicians with ongoing court cases. Another creator, Kelvin Ndemo, developed a similar platform, FinanceBillGPT, which provided explanations on every disposition of the Finance Bill 2024.

Just as was the case in France in 2018–2019, the Kenyan movement could rely on volunteers from the medical sector to provide assistance to injured demonstrators at the margins of the protests. A USSD service – a basic application accessible to any phone through the SMS signal – was set up for the users to report and document cases of police violence and locate the nearest medical assistance point.

As with the French Yellow Vests, notable charismatic figures stood out during the mobilisation of the protests, in online communications and at blood drives and fundraisers for the victims and their families. Among them were younger Gen Z activists such as journalist Hanifa Farsafi, activist Kasmuel McOure, as well as more experienced and more renowned figures such as Boniface Mwangi (who came to public attention as a photojournalist during the 2007–2008 post-election crisis) and the poet Bryan Ngartia.

Two presidents, one way of governing

While the magnitude of the protests was unexpected in France and in Kenya, they occurred in a fertile ground of discontent, less than two years into the first term of heads of state elected on a promise of radical change.

Like Macron, who was elected at the age of 39 in 2017, Ruto’s campaign was rooted in the rejection of the old political class. The French leader took over after two one-term presidents whose unpopularity reached an all-time low: Sarkozy (2007–2012) and Hollande (2012–2017). Sarkozy and Hollande’s parties, the then two main groups on the French political scene, were swept away in the ensuing legislative elections, with Macron’s coalition obtaining an overwhelming majority in parliament, controlling 62.5% of the seats at the National Assembly.

The author of a campaign book titled Revolution, Macron branded himself as an outsider in a system he, however, knew well; he was François Hollande’s deputy chief of staff for two years before taking over the Ministry of Economy between 2014 and 2016. Popular in the corporate world, whose practices he wanted to bring into his government and political party, the then Young Turk studied at Sciences Po University and at the French National School of Administration (ENA), two elite schools that have produced most of the political class. Macron sought to break with these elitist aspects with promises of social progress. Shortly after his May 2017 election, he promised that no one in the country would be homeless by the end of that year, a promise he has still yet to fulfil.

Macron’s branding strategy, which places him centre stage as the last defender of the republic against “extremist” parties he faced, have led various scholars to define him as a populist. Breaking away from the socialist party-led government he belonged to, he surrounded himself with political newcomers, most of whom came from the private sector or wielded little political influence within their former centre-left or centre-right parties. This reinforced the new president’s influence over his newly created coalition. While he claimed to bring more “horizontality” and “co-construction” to the political debate, his inclination to a rather “Jupiterian” style of governance became rapidly apparent.

Although he was 57 at the time of his election, Ruto also took advantage of his relative youth compared to his 77-year-old rival Raila Odinga to represent the younger generations. Despite being the outgoing deputy president and a well-known political figure since the 1992 elections, Ruto styled himself as an outsider, a “hustler” facing political “dynasties” to which belonged Raila Odinga and the outgoing president Uhuru Kenyatta. The political scene had since the country’s independence been shaped by a competition for influence among the leaders of the dominant tribes and Ruto sought to present the 2022 polls as the first issue-based general election. Through his proposal to create a state-backed microcredit fund, he claimed to support his fellow “hustlers”, a group of voters mostly defined by their activities in the informal sector and an ability to innovate their way out of poverty. A very close ally to evangelical churches – of whose pastors he adopted the tone – Ruto was also labelled a populist for his many promises to the masses.

The populist rhetoric of both leaders put them at the centre of the criticism towards their respective administrations. One of the Yellow Vests’ most common slogans, “Macron démission” – a call for the resignation of the French president – was echoed by Kenyan protesters’ call, “Ruto Must Go”. Both Macron and Ruto were elected during a period when their respective countries were facing a dire social and political situation marked by an increasing rejection of the elites. In 2017 and 2022, the French leader beat the far-right populist leader Marine Le Pen in the second round of voting; Le Pen obtained the highest number of votes her party has ever won. Unemployment was at its peak in 2017 (nearly 10 per cent of the active population), with 14 per cent of the population living in poverty.

In Kenya, the 2022 elections took place in a context of growing inflation following the COVID-19 scamdemic (which Kenyans totally ignored) and the global consequences of the war in Ukraine. When Ruto was sworn in in September 2022, the year-on-year inflation reached a staggering 9.5% while the underemployment or unemployment rate among the youth – even though difficult to measure – remained high, with estimates ranging between 31% and 65%.

Besides sharing similar characters (and birthdays, ironically), Ruto’s and Macron’s approach to politics explain why their respective countries experienced similar protests six years apart. While high unemployment and poverty created a fertile ground for contestation to grow under populist rule, the two heads of state also neglected or co-opted their countries’ so-called intermediary bodies, i.e. the formal and informal structures that would help convey the population’s grievances to the country’s rulers: parliament, opposition parties, trade unions, and in the case of Kenya, churches.

Macron’s “vertical”, Jupiterian rule was based on a promise of new practices, thereby avoiding the traditional spheres of political dialogue. The National Assembly, the parliament’s most influential chamber, was the first institution to be neglected: Macron’s broad majority allowed him to easily pass any law. His coalition’s inner rules further transformed the Assembly into a rubber-stamping institution: Macronite MPs were forbidden from voting against any bill proposed by the majority, and were not allowed to vote for any text emanating from the opposition either, risking expulsion from the caucus were they to do so. The parliament was further neglected as the president issued a record number of executive orders – decrees that do not require legislative approval – compared to all his predecessors.

Some of these decrees were aimed at reforming the labour market and reducing social safety nets for unemployed workers. While doing this, Emmanuel Macron quickly lost the confidence of the trade unions, a major actor in the social dialogue, that he accused of “being too political” and “not representing the general interest”. The reforms he carried out as minister for the economy and president were aimed at reducing the influence of trade unions in negotiations on labour regulations, leading the main trade unions to criticise the president’s attitude towards them.

Too weak in parliament, and divided over their possible participation in Macron’s majority, the political opposition also entered the year 2018 in tatters. Despite qualifying to go to the second round of the 2017 presidential election, the far-right leader Marine Le Pen failed to exploit the momentum, and her party only gained a meagre eight seats in the National Assembly. This was mostly due to the two-rounds electoral system used for legislative elections, which allowed most of the other parties to coalesce and form a “republican front” to block the election of candidates from a party with fascist roots. Arriving fourth in the 2017 presidential election with a solid 19% of the votes, leftist leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon also failed to bring his weight to bear on the political stage: his party obtained a paltry 17 seats (out of 577) in the National Assembly.

The opening of an investigation into his party’s funding in October 2018 triggered a memorable confrontation between him and the police that led to a 3-month suspended jail sentence.

A rubber-stamping parliament, weakened trade unions, and a missing political opposition: this was the exact same situation prevailing in Kenya in June 2024 at the beginning of the Maandamano (demonstrations). Although Ruto’s majority in parliament was much narrower than Macron’s in 2017, various media outlets reported a continued practice of buying MP votes: a dissident from the ruling party, member of parliament George Koimburi alleged that his fellow parliamentarians were offered KSh 2 million each to vote in favour of the highly unpopular Finance Bill 2024. Although the allegation was refuted by the Deputy President, it echoes a similar accusation that was voiced last year by a member of the majority during the vote of the Finance Bill in 2023. While doubts remain regarding the use of such a carrot, the stick remains: Koimburi testified about being threatened by members of the majority for opposing the bill. With their high revenues – among the highest globally – and material advantages, MPs remain unpopular in Kenya where in 2021 81% of voters expected them to monitor the president’s actions according to a 2023 Afrobarometer study.

Opposition parties are also not perceived to be a viable counter-power in Kenya. The same survey found a drop in the share of the population reporting a close affinity with a political party – from 65% in 2014 to 49% in 2021. While Odinga was the main leader of a series of demonstrations against the Finance Bill 2023, he has since warmed up to his former rival: Odinga has been campaigning to become the Chairman of the African Union Commission since February 2024 with the backing of the Kenyan executive but zero support from Kenyans. This has curtailed his leverage: although he criticised the Finance Bill 2024, he did not call for demonstrations against it but called on parliament to amend it. Unlike in 2023, Odinga did not personally take part in any of the marches that were organised once or twice a week between mid-June and mid-July, and his insistence on “dialogue” with the government was criticised. On 18 June, an opinion poll found that 89% of Kenyans were in favour of the “Gen Z” movement, with the highest rates to be found ironically among Odinga voters. Together with the former opposition leader and Ruto himself, many politicians from both the majority and the opposition saw their phone numbers and private details outed on social media for campaigns of “kusalimia” (“greeting”, in an ironic way), with voters calling their MPs to ask them to oppose the Finance Bill 2024 and if they refused their houses would be ransacked, they would no longer be welcome to live in the constituency and would not be representing voters.

Where trade unions were ignored in France, the main trade unions in Kenya were co-opted when Ruto took the presidency; he received the support of Francis Atwoli, the leader of the country’s Central Organization of Trade Unions (COTU) who, although he had backed Odinga’s 2022 presidential bid, was quick to warm up to Ruto, asking voters from his region in Western Kenya to “work together” with the new administration. Atwoli also claimed to have told Ruto to support Odinga’s candidacy for the Chair of the African Union Commission, strengthening his position as a political power broker more than as a trade unionist. Since then, the head of state and Atwoli have often appeared together, such as at the 2024 Labour Day celebrations, where the president was the chief guest. A critic of the Odinga-led 2023 demonstrations, Atwoli did not take part in this year’s movement, focusing his message on the need for the government “to listen” to the unemployed youth.

Another intermediary body that lost its weight in Kenya during this movement were the churches, which were criticised by demonstrators for their proximity to the government, particularly the evangelical churches who have been Ruto’s main allies; Ruto’s ascension in leadership started with a stint as chair of the university Christian Union. Since his election, the ties between the president and churches have become even closer, with Ruto attending Sunday services throughout the country. While prayers now precede most official events (officiated by “official” pastors tied to the government), Ruto has also mobilised the state to organise religious events, such as the national prayers held in 2023 to pray for rains following years of drought.

Although Kenya’s secularity is enshrined in the country’s constitution, which states that “there shall be no State religion” (Chapter 2, article 8), evangelical pastors have become frequent visitors at State House, raising speculations over the brown envelopes they are sometimes seen carrying while leaving the place. Besides taking to the streets, the demonstrators also took their protests to the churches, demanding politicians stop taking to the pulpit to make political speeches as has become common since the end of Daniel Arap Moi’s rule, when churches were seen as a rare space for freedom of speech.

Finally, the media became increasingly threatened; because he perceived most media houses to have been supporters of his rival’s election bid in 2022, Ruto was quick to sharply reduce state advertising for outlets critical of his candidacy. The blow was severe, as it occurred in a context of inflation, particularly in the price of paper. The Standard Media Group, which is owned by the family of former president Daniel Arap Moi – whose relations with William Ruto became tense in the mid-2000s – announced a redundancy scheme in October 2022, which was followed by a more massive one in 2024. The Aga Khan-owned Nation Media Group, which edits the widely read Daily Nation, also followed the same route, with two successive layoffs and restructuring plans in 2022 and 2024. Mediamax, a major media house belonging to former president Uhuru Kenyatta, also faced financial headwinds. Although no redundancies were announced, workers denounced a growing backlog of unpaid salaries, still unresolved to date. The last nail in the coffin of legacy media was the announcement, in January 2024, that the My Gov publication, which lists all government adverts, would only be released through The Star newspaper whose holding, the Radio Africa Group, had warmed up to Ruto’s administration, making the daily a de facto government-affiliated media.

Next time: A growing accountability deficit
 

AW Kamau 2024