Jubilee Alliance Party savours success in nominations

The Jubilee Alliance Party (JAP) conducted its first ever primaries and Patrick Tutui was picked as the party's flag bearer in the forthcoming Kajiado Central by-election.

The party was unveiled one week ago and is meant to culminate in the merger of President Uhuru Kenyatta's The National Alliance (TNA) and his deputy William Ruto's United Republican Party (URP), the main partners under the Jubilee coalition.

TNA Executive Director Joseph Mathai said the primaries were not characterised by any hitches or violence, adding they ensured they met the highest standards.

"This was a concerted effort between TNA, URP and JAP. The exercise was free, fair and credible and we hope our candidate will be the most preferred," said Mr Mathai.

Mathai said Tutui won the nominations with 10,502 votes, in results declared yesterday morning.

His closest rival, Elijah Memusi, had 8,648 votes while Anthony Kiroken came a distant third with 5,866. Joyce Kimojino managed to get 40 votes out of 25,256 valid votes cast.

Financial muscle

Mathai said the party achieved the undisputed results because they had agreed with the candidates to collapse the 87 polling stations in the constituency to 56 for easy management.

"JAP does not have IEBC's financial muscle so we agreed with the candidates to conduct the nominations in 56 polling stations. We hope the support we have had will increase during the by-election," said Mathai.

Kajiado Woman Rep Mary Seneta congratulated the JAP officials for conducting a free and fair nomination exercise.

Ms Seneta said Kajiado Central had set the standards for how nominations are supposed to be conducted and challenged the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party to conduct their primaries in a similar manner.

"Kajiado Central has set the standard and we hope ODM will do the same so the candidates can compete peacefully. If the candidates are picked like this, we will not have problems," said Seneta.

She said JAP was currently working on campaign methods by first talking to the losers with a view to ensuring they stayed in the party and supported the winning candidate.

ODM will hold its nominations on Wednesday.

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission has set January 29 as the deadline for parties to finalise their nominations and determine intra-party disputes.

Nomination papers are to be submitted on February 16 and 17 and the official campaign period is set for February 18 to March 14.