Jubilee Party pre-nominations bravado was all hot air after all

Over the Easter weekend, a TV journalist visited the Jubilee Party headquarters at Pangani, Nairobi, to check on preparations for the nominations scheduled for Friday, April 21.

The visit came against the backdrop of chaotic ODM party primaries in different parts of the country, and gleeful reactions from Pangani House ridiculing their rivals’ propensity for violence and disorderliness.

At hand to brief and show the TV journalist around was none other than Raphael Tuju, the party secretary-general.

Mr Tuju, himself a former broadcaster, was in his element, describing to the last detail the security features of the ballot papers and the superior electoral management machine his party had assembled.

The most memorable part of the visit for my colleague was when the party chief walked him down to the basement where a logistics demo was done, complete with forklifts picking and dropping boxes and equipment on a vehicle.

BETTER NOMINATIONS

Mr Tuju’s parting shot? “We are going to deliver better nominations than even the IEBC [the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission] would have done.’’

Apart from journalists, who are trained to take such with a pinch of salt, anyone would be excused for getting bedazzled by the Tuju show.

On the eve of the Jubilee primaries in selected counties, President Uhuru Kenyatta, also the party leader, looked so impressed that he came out on national television to promise Kenyans foolproof nominations the next day. Well, we now know it was all hot air from Pangani House and State House.

Television footage of disappointed aspirants and their disgruntled supporters protesting over inadequate voting materials and marked ballot papers highlighted a fraud of monumental proportions.

The decision to cancel the primaries after spending the better part of the day last Friday insisting all was well cannot compensate for the damage already suffered by the aspirants from whom the party collected close to a billion shillings in nomination fees.

LOOK FOR RESOURCES

Worse, the contestants for the various seats now have to look for resources above their campaign budgets to again get out supporters to vote.

But how did Jubilee get itself into this mess in the first place? Forget, for a moment, that spin about the party secretariat and the elections having not anticipated a massive nominations turnout and getting overwhelmed.

I looked up possible explanations on the social media and public statements by some Jubilee officials, and there were quite some wacky ones.

The one that appeared to find most traction was that Mr Tuju, being Luo, is a Raila mole in Jubilee.

An ironic hashtag, #ThankYouTuju, started by ODM followers, trended the whole day. But the folks that got close to hitting the bull’s eye were those who found it not out of character for Jubilee to pull out something like this.

The writer is the chief sub-editor, ‘Business Daily’. [email protected].