Jubilee coalition to hold joint nominations

Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta and his running mate Eldoret North MP William Ruto on Monday announced that over 8,000 aspirants from their four affiliate parties seeking various seats in the elections will now be subjected to a joint nomination.

The move is likely to spark fresh controversies in the new coalition still struggling from an acrimonious fallout between Mr Kenyatta and the United Democratic Forum (UDF) leader Musalia Mudavadi.

But Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto who spoke at a joint live radio interview aired on Kameme FM and the K24 television said it was worthless to conduct separate nominations arguing that it would strengthen their opponents.

“We prefer joint nominations because that will increase our chances of winning many seats in the Senate, National Assembly and the County governments so that when our coalition wins we are able to make crucial decisions,” Mr Kenyatta said.

Mr Kenyatta also promised that losers in the joint nominations will not go home empty handed. Read (Uhuru-Ruto coalition carves up counties ahead of the elections)

He said they would be offered appointments in various arms of government by the jubilee administration after the elections.

His position was also immediately supported by Mr Ruto who asked candidates to accept the proposed joint nomination.

“We want to face these elections as a team. Candidates should accept a joint nomination process. If you can’t win nominations, you can’t win the main elections, so people should not fear a joint process,” Mr Ruto said.

The two leaders also cautioned their supporters to be wary of propaganda that would be unleashed by their opponents.

“Five years ago, we formed an election team called Pentagon that campaigned for Mr Odinga. Four of the Pentagon members are now in the Jubilee side and one Musalia Mudavadi is on his own. Now even if you are a poor mathematician you can calculate and know that numbers don’t lie,” Mr Ruto declared.

As the Jubilee began work on joint nominations, their Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (Cord) counterparts disagreed over similar plans.

The Cord’s national coalition management board’s co-chairman Mr Dalmas Otieno announced that each party will conduct its own nomination.

Cord candidates will now face each other despite supporting a joint presidential candidate even as the coalition declared it is targeting over 160 seats in parliament, 29 seats in both the senate and the county governments.

“The summit has decided that each party will conduct its own nominations where we feel there should be reconciliation the board will advise,” Mr Otieno said.

The joint nomination would have crashed the pre-election alliances being developed by various candidates within the parties as the Cord agreement would have compelled candidates for gubernatorial seats in Nairobi and Mombasa to pick their running mates from other affiliate parties.