NAIROBI: Kenyan police fired teargas at dozens of protesters and blocked off streets leading to the presidential palace on Thursday as small demonstrations continued in several cities, even after the president bowed to pressure to withdraw a tax hike bill.
Turnout was well down from the height of the mass rallies sparked by the bill over the past week. President William Ruto withdrew the legislation on Wednesday, a day after clashes killed at least 23 people and parliament was briefly stormed and set alight.
Ruto is grappling with the most serious crisis of his two-year-old presidency as the youth-led protest movement has grown rapidly from online condemnations of the tax hikes into mass rallies demanding a political overhaul.
Lacking a formal leadership structure, however, protest supporters were divided on how far to carry the demonstrations.
"Let's not be foolish as we fight for a better Kenya," Boniface Mwangi, a prominent social justice activist, said in an Instagram post.
He voiced support for demonstrations on Thursday but opposed calls to invade State House, the president's formal offices and residence, a move that he said could spur more violence and be used to justify a crackdown.
In the capital, Nairobi, police and soldiers patrolled the streets on Thursday and blocked access to State House. Police fired teargas to disperse several dozen people who had gathered in the centre of the city.
Doctors volunteer group Medics for Kenya said its staff at the Jamia Mosque/Crescent hospital had been hit by teargas, and that it condemned in "the strongest terms possible violence meted out at on our volunteer medical teams".
Reuters reporters saw army vehicles on the streets after the government deployed the military to help police.
Elsewhere, hundreds of protesters gathered in the port city of Mombasa and in the western city of Kisumu, local television footage showed, although those gatherings appeared peaceful.
While some protest supporters said they would not demonstrate on Thursday as the finance bill had been scrapped, others pledged to press on, saying only Ruto's resignation would satisfy them.
"Right now is not about just the finance bill but about #RutoMustGo," political activist and protester Davis Tafari said in a text message. "We have to make sure that Ruto and his MPs have resigned and fresh elections are held ... We occupy State House for dignity and justice."
Eli Owuor, 34, from Kibera, an informal settlement and a traditional hotbed of protests, also said he was prepared to join a push on to State House.
"We may just need to visit Zakayo today in his house to prove that after parliament we can occupy State House," he said, using a nickname protesters have given to Ruto that references a a biblical tax collector viewed as corrupt.
In a speech on Wednesday, Ruto defended his push to raise taxes on items such as bread, cooking oil and diapers, saying it was justified by the need to cut Kenya's high debt, which has made borrowing difficult and squeezed the currency. . - Reuters
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