Kenya Kwanza is not governing -it is gasping. Gripped by fear and lacking legitimacy, the regime is tearing through the nation’s constitutional order while feeding the public a cocktail of lies and paranoia.
Interior CS Kipchumba Murkomen’s recent remarks branding youth-led protests as a “coup attempt” and “terrorism disguised as dissent” are not just false. They are malicious, calculated, and dangerous lies that if not carefully navigated can change the course of this nation forever.
This isn’t political rhetoric. It’s authoritarian gaslighting. Murkomen’s statement is a grotesque distortion of Aesop’s “Boy Who Cried Wolf,” only this time, the wolves are in power and they’re crying “wolf” to mask the sound of their own repression. Each cry of “terrorism” is not a warning, but a diversion designed to shield the regime’s crimes: The use of live rounds on unarmed citizens, the deployment of the military against civilians, and the deliberate silencing of a grieving, furious nation.
What happened on June 25 was not a coup. It was a memorial. Young Kenyans gathered not to overthrow the government, but to mourn the more than 60 lives lost during last year’s peaceful protests against a draconian Finance Bill. Instead of listening, the government chose violence once again. Police opened fire. Protesters were beaten. Journalists were targeted. And yet Murkomen, in breathtaking bad faith, calls this a rebellion.
It is not the people who are rebelling against the Constitution, it is the State. The very government sworn to uphold the law now routinely breaks it. The right to protest, enshrined in Article 37 of the Constitution, is not optional. It is not conditional. It is a foundational right. But this administration continues to criminalise it, to brand peaceful citizens as enemies of the State.
Let’s be clear: This is not governance. It is suppression. Kenya Kwanza is not protecting democracy. Instead, it is sabotaging it.
The regime’s playbook is chillingly predictable:
First, State censorship. Live broadcasts are cut mid-sentence just as police crack down on crowds. Court orders to restore transmission are ignored. These are not minor breaches. They are a deliberate, unconstitutional effort to hide state violence from the public eye.
Second, militarised policing. The deployment of the Kenya Defence Forces in June 2024 broke a critical line between civil order and military force. The KDF is trained for war, not protest control. Bringing them onto our streets was not security, it was an act of intimidation. It sent one clear message: This government sees its own citizens as combatants.
Third, systemic disinformation. With zero evidence, government officials scream about “foreign actors” and “infiltrators.” Meanwhile, verified footage shows police snipers firing live rounds and plainclothes operatives assaulting protesters. At least 19 Kenyans were killed on June 2025 alone. Hundreds more were injured. Their blood is not on “foreign actors.” It is on this regime.
Murkomen’s invocation of a coup plot serves one purpose: to deflect, distract, and destroy dissent. But if this were a real coup as they claim, where are the arrests? Where are the prosecutions? Where is the intelligence trail, the court appearances, the ringleaders?
The absence of credible investigations isn’t a coincidence, it is a confession. There is no coup. Just an administration terrified of a generation that cannot be bought, bullied, or silenced. Kenya Kwanza’s crackdown is not a show of strength. It is the tantrum of a regime in an existential crisis. A government that brands its citizens as “criminal anarchists” for exercising constitutional rights is not exposing the protestors, it is exposing itself. It is declaring its own moral and political bankruptcy.
The Gen Z protesters are not anarchists. They are patriots. They are invoking the law, not defying it. Their demands are simple: Justice, accountability, and dignity. And unlike this regime, they have credibility. A nation cannot survive on fear and falsehoods. And a government that must kill, censor, and fabricate to survive, does not deserve to.
By Joel Kipchumba