Senator Cheruiyot: I may be why Rose Njeri was arrested

Kericho Senator Aaron Cheruiyot at St Andrews Church in Nairobi on January 27, 2025. [Stafford Ondego, Standard]

Senate Majority Leader Aaron Cheruiyot has questioned whether a motion he moved to enhance public participation may have inadvertently contributed to the arrest of activist Rose Njeri.

"It bothers me, to be honest... Then I thought when sitting there that probably I could be the reason for her arrest," said Cheruiyot during a live interview on Monday.

Njeri, a youth activist, was arrested on Friday, May 30, at her home in Nairobi South B estate by officers from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations.

Authorities accuse her of creating Civic Email, an online platform that enabled Kenyans to send objections directly to Parliament. She remains in custody at Pangani Police Station and is expected in court on Tuesday, June 4.

Cheruiyot admitted he had only followed the story in passing while upcountry.

"This is a story that I just saw snippets of online... that there's an activist who's been arrested, they've been taken somewhere, and I didn't follow until this morning when I was seated in your lounge," he noted.

He observed that Njeri's tool aligned with the intention of his motion, which was passed in the Senate after the Gen Z-led protests calling for greater inclusion in governance.

"What I'm reading and what I hear you guys saying is that she had made a platform for doing this... That's in essence what public participation is about," Cheruiyot explained.

He reflected on the recommendations made following the protests, which included urging Parliament to adopt more modern feedback channels.

"Part of the recommendations that we made is that Parliament needs to come up with ways of receiving public feedback beyond the traditional means," he said.

He went on to describe how most young people now prefer digital tools like WhatsApp over email.

"Many of these young people, they don't send their feedback to emails and the traditional way of sending feedback like we did... Even I don't send emails that much. I'm not even a younger person. Even in my generation, you click on WhatsApp and you wish to communicate more easily," Cheruiyot noted.

He defended Njeri's platform as a legitimate means of civic engagement.

"There has to be a proper way of feeding back into the system... I thought what she had done was brilliant," he added.