HOAX: This website running a petition to cancel Kenya’s 2024 Finance Bill is a sham
The real petition is on the Change.org website.
A website submitted for fact-checking via PesaCheck’s WhatsApp Tipline and shared on Facebook, purporting to run a petition to cancel Kenya’s 2024 Finance Bill, is a HOAX.
The post reads, “*SIGN PETITION TO CANCEL THE FINANCE BILL KENYA*_ Save Our Sociey By Signing Petition and get justice for * Rex* _ *SIGN PETITION*”
The landing page of the website link provided indicates that 25,630 people had signed the petitions as of 24 June 2024.
A section of the site reads, “SIGN PETITION SEEKING PRESIDENT AKUFO-ADDO TO SIGN ANTI-LGBT BILL,” which contradicts the aim of the petition in question.
To sign the purported petition, one is required to fill in personal information, including name and gender.
PesaCheck intentionally filled in random details, and they were accepted. However, to submit the signature, the next step asks the applicant to share the link on WhatsApp — a common feature of online scams.
This section includes the logo of change.org, a website that allows users to create and sign petitions to advance various social causes globally.
A WHOIS domain search shows that the website was registered on 27 May 2024 in Iceland (IS).
A search on the Change.org website using the keywords “finance bill Kenya” established that there is a petition titled “CANCEL THE FINANCE BILL Kenya, 2024.”
The petition started on 15 June 2024 by a ‘Kenyan activist’ has garnered 111,173 signatures.
Kenya’s proposed Finance Bill 2024, creates tax hikes and has attracted anti-tax protests countrywide, with demonstrators calling on the Bill to be scrapped. The government on 18 June 2024 said the Bill will be amended to remove the proposed 16 per cent VAT on bread, drop taxes on transportation of sugar, financial services, foreign exchange transactions and the 2.5 per cent Motor Vehicle Tax.
Amid the 20 June 2024 protests, the National Assembly voted to pass the bill to its second reading by a vote of 204 to 115. The amendments to the bill will be considered in the House on 25 June 2024.
PesaCheck has looked into a website submitted for fact-checking via PesaCheck’s WhatsApp Tipline and shared on Facebook, purporting to run a petition to cancel Kenya’s 2024 finance bill, and finds it to be a HOAX.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck fact-checker Peris Gachahi and edited by PesaCheck senior copy editor Mary Mutisya and chief copy editor Stephen Ndegwa.
The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck managing editor Doreen Wainainah.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water / sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
