Kenya’s opposition is due to protest for a second day on Thursday over the high cost of living and tax hikes after police clashed with demonstrators and arrested at least 300 people on Wednesday.
“The voice of the people must be heard. Our peaceful protest continues,” opposition leader Raila Odinga wrote on Twitter on Thursday morning.
The Wednesday-to-Friday demonstrations are the third round of protests that the opposition has called for this month.
Senior opposition leaders were arrested after demonstrators hurled rocks at police and security forces fired volleys of tear gas.
In Mathare, a settlement on the outskirts of Nairobi, police reported one person had been shot dead. A senior police officer told Al Jazeera that police were investigating the cause of death. Al Jazeera also saw one person who had been shot and injured in the stomach. He was taken to a nearby hospital.
Local newspaper The Nation reported that Odinga’s Azimio opposition party had called upon its supporters to assemble at Huruma grounds, Kangemi grounds and Central Park in the capital Nairobi on Thursday.
On its Twitter page, the newspaper published photographs of armed officers on standby in Nairobi’s central business district where there was a “semblance of normality” as of 9am local time (06:00 GMT).
According to Al Jazeera’s Catherine Soi, reporting from Nairobi, government forces were deployed in “hotspot areas where protests normally occur” within the capital on Wednesday. Schools were closed and many businesses shuttered across Nairobi.
Veteran politician Odinga lost last August’s election to President William Ruto, his fifth loss in a presidential election.
Odinga has repeatedly asked his followers to engage in acts of civil disobedience against a government he accuses of raising the cost of living and consolidating power.
Ruto has pledged to champion the interests of the poor, but he has seen the price of basic commodities balloon under his administration. His government argues higher taxes are necessary to help deal with growing debt repayments and to fund job creation initiatives. Odinga allies arrested
The opposition condemned the arrest of several Odinga allies. Lawmaker Babu Owino was arrested at the airport in the coastal town of Mombasa on Wednesday, where he had planned to lead the protests.
The member of parliament Ken Chonga was also arrested with some of his loyalists during a gathering ahead of a march in Kilimo county in Coastal Kenya.
“We pleaded with them to stay there as we addressed the residents but they insisted we should disperse. They arrested us,” Chonga told journalists at Kilifi Police Station on Wednesday.
Police also arrested Calvin Okoth, a youth leader in the Jacaranda Grounds People’s Parliament.
Does anyone know of an estimation of the net progressiveness (or regressiveness, I guess)? I only found this neat overview of the tax regime changes by EY.
