Jubilee to repeat primaries in Kajiado East after court order

Kajiado Woman Representative Mary Seneta. (Photo: Peterson Githaiga, Standard)

The Kajiado Jubilee Party primaries will be repeated Friday after on aspirant challenged the outcome.

Mary Seneta, who is the current Kajiado woman representative, had moved to the Jubilee tribunal to appeal against the nomination of incumbent Peris Tobiko for the Kajiado East parliamentary seat.

But the tribunal declared Tobiko the Jubilee flag-bearer, prompting Seneta to move to the Political Parties Disputes Tribunal, which ordered re-tallying of votes within 48 hours and also a repeat of the primaries in two stations, namely St Monicah Catholic Church and the GK Prison Primary School.

Speaking to The Standard Thursday, Seneta said she was confident that the people of Kajiado East would finally get the leader they want.

"'No amount of intimidation will stop the people of Kajiado from electing the leader of their choice. That's why we are requesting senior government officers not to interfere with the repeat primaries," said Seneta.

Speaking on the phone, Tobiko so urged her supporters to come out in large numbers to vote again.

"I'm appealing to my supporters to come out in large numbers and vote for me again. We did it and we will do it again," she said.

Separately, the Kajiado County government has launched new generation tamper-proof letters of allotment.

The new document will automatically render null and void all the old ones issued by county administrations since independence.

The new documents, with a water mark, will counter the production of fake land titles and double allocation of land in the county.

Kajiado County is ranked third in the country in recorded cases of land fraud after Lamu and Kiambu.

The problem is traced back to the era of county councils where civic leaders had the power to sub-divide and issue allotment letters to their electorate.

Governor David Nkedianye welcomed the development when he presided over the launch at the KCB grounds in Kajiado town.

Hundreds of unsuspecting property owners, many with forged title deeds, have unresolved cases in courts.

Mr Nkedianye said the letters would help to eradicate the mess in the land registry.

"The matter was grave. We came in as the county government to find that many people shared the same property with different letters of allotment or title deeds," said the governor.

He accused Ministry of Lands officials and land brokers of messing up the registry to allow them to steal from the public.

Validation of properties

Last year, Nkedianye ordered the county lands office to embark on validation of properties and their owners across the county.

All the people whose land/plots were validated were issued with documents to qualify their ownership.