Opinion: Don’t let integrity stand in way of party nominations

Don’t let integrity stand in the way of party nominations

Friends, this week I am mourning the death of common sense in Kenya. Just what is wrong with ODM, for instance?

First, they decide to impose a Sh1 million fine on an honourable lady, Elizabeth Ongoro, a loyal member whose only crime was to express herself loudly at the party headquarters.

Thankfully, a party that has no time for such meaningless concepts like discipline and integrity quickly gave her a ticket to run for the parliamentary seat she has always dreamt of.

This is the only way to get strong leaders into the August house.

But that was not the last of ODM’s string of misadventures in this season of party primaries.

After a very well-thought-out nomination exercise in Busia, the party, out of nowhere, decided to nullify the results.

This time, the victim was the hard-working incumbent governor who happened to have an overwhelming victory in his village.

The Orange party was upset that His Excellency Governor Sospeter Odeke Ojaamong simply got too many votes from Teso North and Teso South constituencies.

The party argued that the votes Ojaamong’ got in the two constituencies exceeded by far, even the number of registered voters on the IEBC roll.

GHOST VOTERS

Permit me to ask, ladies and gentlemen, is a politician no longer allowed to somehow get additional votes from dead village mates or even those from a neighbouring constituency or country?

What is wrong with that? Consider this folks, Busia County has seven constituencies and five of them are dominated by members of the Luhya community.

How would the party expect Ojaamong to just sit back and let his rival Paul Otuoma run away with a seat he has worked so hard to retain since he got elected in 2013?

This is why I don’t understand why Otuoma is still making a lot of unnecessary noise about this result. He wanted to win something and he did just that in five out of the seven constituencies. He should be happy with that.

In any case, he should have known from the word go that the gods did not want him to be governor.

It is the gods who miraculously changed the headlines of a local daily to declare to the world that he had defected to Jubilee on the very morning of the nominations.

And the governor, in perfect unison with the gods, went on national television to confirm that Otuoma had indeed defected to the ‘Tuko Pamoja’ party, and that the voting would be a mere formality.

It is the gods who delayed the results of that primary by more than 24 hours to ensure the votes from Tesoland were firmly in the bag. Now Otuoma is ranting and raving against the gods. How incredulous!

I hope this madness does not spread to other parties this week as the primaries intensify. I pray the parties do not revisit that malicious conversation about degrees and other academic papers.

Can you imagine what that would do to the Jubilee nominations in Nairobi or Kiambu? Who wants that kind of confusion in the President’s party this close to a General Election?

Indeed, if this idle talk about academic papers is allowed to mar the party primaries, what would become of the direct nomination already given by ODM to the governor of Mombasa?

IGNORE CORRUPTION

On a positive note though, our political parties must be commended for refusing to listen to all that noise about corruption in the country.

Imagine if, for instance, the parties had decided to bar all the people mentioned in scandals from running for public office!

That would have completely thrown the political landscape into a spin.

There would have been no one to run for Senate, there would be no one to take charge of our county governments, there would be no one to make laws in the National Assembly after August.

Imagine if they had extended that unnecessary scrutiny to the presidential race!

If they started asking the president about the malicious claim that some of his relatives got contracts meant for disadvantaged women, or the former Vice President about the wild allegations regarding a piece of land in Yatta, or if they were to bother our former PM with those nonsensical claims regarding Kazi kwa Vijana, or if they troubled our Deputy President with all the baseless accusations about land; or wasted our precious time revisiting the old tired tales of the embassy in Tokyo or the cemetery.

But I am so glad that sense has prevailed at last. Every sensible Kenyan is staying focused.

Elections are a serious issue and must be devoid of unwarranted distractions such as integrity or even that misguided part of the constitution known as Chapter Six.

Mr Ageyo is the Managing Editor, KTN.jageyo@gmail.com