- The high hope they had while diligently seeking education is quickly turning into despair.
- Their case is further exacerbated by the fact that their parent’s lives were wrecked by the structural adjustment of the early 1990s.
A rather curious debate was sparked in the aftermath of the Tuesday public protests against the Finance Bill.
Opinion is divided on whether the young protesters who jammed the streets are able to mobilise into a force of change akin to the broad coalition of change of yesteryears.
I must say from the outset that I prefer to see our governance issues resolved through reasoned dialogue so that progress is made without making any side feeling arm-twisted.
But I have lived long enough to know that good intentions are sometimes never enough.
As such protest, as envisaged in Article 37, must remain not only a political tool but also a constitutional tool to help realign the barons with the wishes of the people.
Back to the debate: did we have civic conscious young people protesting a law they deemed was "without heart and mind" or did we have social media users out to get content for their platforms?
Let’s face it. One of the hits of Kibakinomics was education.
The first 15 years from the time Kibaki was first sworn in as President, we pushed up school enrolment rate to levels never seen in East Africa.
We further made investments that saw us score highly both in school retention and matriculation rates.
The eight-year-olds when Kenyans were chanting 'yote yawezekana' are today's Gen Z.
The tragedy, however, is that after the legacy of public spending mismanagement of the past decade, these young people find themselves with little opportunity.
The high hopes they had while seeking education are quickly turning into despair.
Their case is exacerbated by the fact that their parent’s lives were wrecked by IMF-imposed structural adjustments of the early 1990s.
Then those parents rebuilt their lives during the years of prosperity of mid-2000s.
Now, all what their parents worked for seems threatened by a tax code that appears predisposed to suck life out of thrift and enterprise.
With all these at stake, no young person would put himself or herself on a collision course with an overzealous police force for likes and retweets.
These are young people who know very well that they must speak for themselves.
Convenor Inter Parties Youth Forum spoke to Star