ODM primaries in Nakuru Town West suspended

 

ODM primaries for the Nakuru Town West parliamentary seat were postponed due to anomalies in the ballot papers.

The names of Eric Ogada and Jacob Luka who were cleared to contest for the party ticket in the primaries were missing in the voting materials dispatched to various polling centers Tuesday morning.

The two told journalists that they would not allow the process to take place because they felt disfranchised.

“We have campaigned for months, paid the necessary levies to the ODM party and also gotten an assurance that our names would be on the ballot papers. We cannot allow the process to take place without our names,” Luka said.

Aspiring women representative Beatrice Onsongo who was battling it out with Aisha Rashid for the ODM ticket was equally shocked after her name was omitted from the ballot papers.

Rashid, as the sole aspirant for the seat on the party ticket went through unopposed.

ODM County chairman Peter Ole Osono and his coordinator Raymond Ochieng said after consulting with the party's National Elections Board, they decided to postpone the primaries until after the issue is sorted out.

"We could not continue with the nominations in Nakuru Town West because the names of the candidates were missing from the ballot papers yet they had been cleared," Ochieng said.

The official accused some members of the party of frustrating the exercise.

The party’s appointed officer Richard Kyondi said due the anomalies on the ballot papers, he has been asked by the National Elections Board to call of the primaries until further notice.

He, however, said the exercise will continue in Nakuru Town East constituency where the ballot papers were in order.

The nomination in the Nakuru Town East started five hours late after the logistic nightmare that was brought about by the confusion in the neighboring constituency.

Ochieng claimed that Jubilee has interfered with the ODM nomination process saying political brokers had hijacked the process leading to the confusion.

"We have information even some of our party officials have been compromised by the Jubilee leadership in the county to scuttle the process," he claimed but declined to give names of the people he said were meddling in the process.