Mt Kenya women locked out of county assemblies

A worrying trend is taking shape in parts of Central Kenya where women county assembly aspirants are locked out.

As was the case in 2013, most women aspirants lost out in the recent Jubilee primaries ahead of the August elections.

This means women, as was the case in 2013, will have to rely on nominations to fulfil the two-thirds gender rule.

Later, all women aspirants opted out of the race and did not even consider vying as independent candidates.

Every candidate was hoping for a Jubilee ticket, the most popular political party in the region. And just as is the case with other regions, which are controlled by particular political parties, securing the Jubilee ticket in Central Kenya is the hardest part.

Less than 10 women secured the coveted Jubilee ticket to contest member of county assembly seats in the entire central Kenya, just like in 2013.

In Kirinyaga County, for instance, no woman secured the ticket. Even worse, the few who were elected during the last elections were kicked out.

In Murang’a, only one woman won the ticket for the MCA seat. Rosemary Njine is almost sure she will be the MCA of Gaturi Ward.

In Kiambu, two women were lucky to have secured the party’s tickets. Cecilia Wamaitha will be hoping to be the next MCA of Gatuanyaga Ward while Jackline Nungari won the ticket to run for Bibirion.

In Embu, again only one woman, Susan Wanjiku, won the Jubilee ticket. She is eyeing Gaturi North Ward. The same script was repeated in Nyeri County where only two women secured Jubilee tickets to vie for positions of MCA. This brings to six the number of women nominated.

But this is also a Kenyan problem. In 2013, 1,450 MCAs were elected across the county, out of which only 84 were women, representing a 5.8 per cent of elected ward reps.

Due to the constitutional requirement that not more than two-thirds of the members of elective public bodies shall be of the same gender, parties had to nominate more women to fulfil the rule.

Thus, a massive 680 women were nominated. For instance, in Nyeri there are 30 wards yet no woman was elected MCA. Some 13 women had to be nominated.

There was a slight change in Murang’a where out of the 35 MCAs elected, three were women. Political parties had to nominated 13 women MCAs.

In Kirinyaga, only two of the 20 elected MCAs were women. Eight out the nine nominated MCAs had to be were women.

Voters in Embu elected one woman out of 20 ward representatives, which meant 11 women had to be nominated to the assembly.