First Daughter Charlene Ruto has shared reactions from a section of Kenyans who provided feedback on her their engagement with President William Ruto on X Spaces.
The feedback was in response to Charlene’s earlier post in which she requested the Kenyan youth to share their views on the X Spaces engagement with the President on July 5, 2024.
“Taken time to go through and reflect on your comments from my last post where I requested feedback and thoughts on #EngageThePresident Thank you for sharing your insights. Much appreciated. Feedback has been shared,” Charlene said on X.
Charlene was at the forefront of the discussions to proceed even as a section of Kenyan youth initially expressed their disinterest in the meeting.
In a statement on X on July 4, 2024, Charlene challenged the young people to embrace the gesture by Ruto to meet them in a bid to solve the stalemate of protests.
“Young people, the chance of a lifetime awaits you. I encourage you to use it wisely and engage constructively because you are the ones who will determine the continuity of such levels of discussion for your success,” Charlene noted.
Ruto had promised the young people a virtual meeting as per their demands at a presidential round-table interview with three journalists on Sunday, June 30, 2024, after they rejected a proposed multi-sectoral meeting.
Meeting with Ruto
On the day of the planned meeting, State House unsuccessfully tried to host the virtual discussion before joining the X Spaces created by Osama Otero as co-host.
The discussions involved some 160,000 participants and discussed a range of issues including the ballooning public debt, corruption and opulence in government, extra-judicial killings and abductions and austerity measures among others.
Ruto took time to defend his government against the barrage of questions fired at him concerning the conduct of some of the lawmakers and Cabinet Secretaries in his administration.
In his response, Ruto said he was mentoring some of the young politicians and that sometimes they would go overboard with their public display of wealth.
“I agree some of our officials display obnoxious opulence and I have called them personally and advised them how to conduct themselves. I will do more,” Ruto said during the meeting.
During the meeting, Ruto remarked that he did not personally give orders to the police to act with aggression towards the protesting youth. He promised to hold rogue cops caught on camera assaulting the protesters accountable.
“I will look for the rogue police and ensure he is apprehended,” Ruto promised.