Ruto won an election almost two years ago on a platform of championing Kenya’s working poor, but has been caught between the competing demands of lenders such as the International Monetary Fund, which is urging the government to cut deficits to access more funding, and a hard-pressed population.
Very interesting!
Death to the IMF
from an accidental duplicate post i made:
for context, a finance bill was brought by Ruto’s government to bring in austerity measures, mainly by increasing taxes - initially including 16% sales tax on bread and 25% duty on cooking oil - to reduce national debt with notable pressure from the IMF.
protestors have been notably agitated as Ruto was voted on a platform of increase the wealth of the poor, leading to relatively large protests in Kenya and especially in Nairobi.
anyways death to the IMF
now that’s how you storm a capital
if it ain’t burnin’, no one’s learnin’
Members of the CPK are reporting that there have been 8 martyrs due to this thus far.
Have any countries actually just said “We’re not paying you back” to the IMF? I assume they’d be kicked out of trade organizations and whatnot but I’m curious if that might not be a better option…
See Correa, Rafael:
https://www.cadtm.org/Ecuador-s-poisoned-loans-from-the-World-Bank-and-the-IMF
Interesting, so according to the articles there was no substantive backlash from the IMF/World Bank, though Lula’s Brazil did exert enough pressure that they gave in on that specific bilateral debt. Still, the takeaway seems to be that it’s definitely viable.
Out of curiosity, it claims that’s a 3-part series but I can’t find part 3. You know if it exists?
Sorry I have no clue whether or not it exists or not. It might be on the French side of the internet because the author is French, but I’m not sure.
