UDA party: We will not give direct tickets
Deputy President William Ruto addressing delegates at Kasarani Stadium in Nairobi on March 15, 2022 during the UDA National Delegates’ Conference. The party has maintained that its primaries will be free and fair.
The United Democratic Alliance (UDA) party, associated with Deputy President William Ruto, has ruled out issuing direct tickets to aspirants in the forthcoming party primaries.
UDA National Elections Board (NEB) Chairman Antony Mwaura said yesterday that the party primaries slated for April 14 will be free and fair to ensure the will of the people prevails.
“I want to retaliate that all aspirants will be given equal opportunity to participate in the nominations. We will not be issuing direct tickets to any aspirants during the primaries. We are, however, encouraging consensus among aspirants who come from the same regions. Once they have agreed, they are required to come to us and we sign the agreement involving all the parties,” said Mr Mwaura.
However, in cases where political contenders reach a consensus, the party will not conduct nominations.
A case in point is the Kakamega Gubernatorial contest where former Kakamega Senator Boniface Khalwale shelved his gubernatorial bid in support of Cleophas Malala.
Khalwale will vie for the Kakamega Senate seat after talks that were led by Ruto and his Kenya Kwanza co-principals Musalia Mudavadi and Moses Wetangula.
Narok Woman Representative Soipan Tuya and Narok West MP Gabriel Tongoyo last month dropped their Narok gubernatorial bids and unanimously agreed to support former Labour CAS Patrick Ntutu under UDA ticket.
The deal was reached after the intervention of Deputy President William Ruto.
Mwaura who spoke during a press briefing at the Hustler Center in Nairobi added: “after a successful registration of aspirants, the board is now fully seized of the party primaries process.”
He announced the party will start to distribute nomination materials to various counties this weekend with the final batch of materials to be deployed a few days to the nomination day.
He added the distribution of nomination materials will be done by the staff of the board and not party coordinators and aspirants.
Currently, the party is training returning officers and recruiting clerks for various polling stations countrywide.
The party which has more than 6,000 registered aspirants will have 22,000 polling stations for the nomination exercise.
“We will mostly be using schools for the nomination exercise and the Ministry of Education has already given us the nod. We have also requested the Ministry of Interior to give us two police officers for each polling station to provide security,” he said.
The board announced international observers under ‘diplowatch’ from 17 countries have expressed interest to participate in the party primaries process.
Mwaura was flanked by other board members namely Salome Beacco, Aurelia Rono, Ummi Bashir, Matiko Chacha, Raphael Chimera and Halake Dida.
According to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries (IEBC) political parties intending to present candidates in the August 9 election shall conduct their primaries and resolve intra-party disputes on or before April 22.
Political parties intending to present candidates through direct nominations or party primaries are also required to submit the names of the persons nominated to contest in the election to the commission by April 28.
