Mukurwe-ini constituency parliamentary aspirant Eng. Kariuki Wa Muchemi addressing Nyeri County Jubilee party aspirants meeting on Saturday.
By Charles Muriithi
Jubilee party aspirants have been holding meetings over modalities of party primaries ahead of the General Elections set for August 9.
In one of such meetings held at a Le Prestine Hotel in Nyeri town on Saturday, jitters engulfed the hall as it emerged that the party was not enthusiastic about open primaries.
Sources at the closed door meeting where the media was locked out, intimated that the party was more inclined to consensus than universal suffrage.
Most aspirants expressed fears that the party honchos had preferred candidates who would get direct nominations to the detriment of the majority.
Most acrimony is in the county women representative where it’s being whispered that a youthful aspirant has already bagged the ticket notwithstanding the fact that she is not well known leave alone being popular.
Further, in one of the constituencies, a former Member of Parliament is said to have been assured the ticket though he has neither been campaigning nor put up a single poster, banner or billboard while in another constituency a female aspirant is said to pocketed the coveted ticket.
Impeccable sources intimated that cognisant that UDA has an almost fanatical following in the area, open nominations might expose the ruling party’s soft underbelly hence the decision to go for either consensus or opinion polls.
Efforts by the party’s Director of Elections, Kanini Kega who also represents Kieni constituency in the county to alley the hopefuls’ fears did not seem to fully convince them with most fearing that the resources they have spent may end up in smoke.
Kega however assured the meeting that the pitfalls of 2017 would not be repeated as the recent revamping of the Pangani based party had sealed all the loopholes.
Addressing Media after the meeting, Kega said they wanted to work out ways of ensuring that there were no fallouts after the nomination certificates were issued.
He said he was optimistic that the nearly 6,000 aspirants who had indicated their intentions to contest various political seats would be fully satisfied by the nomination process.
The meeting was sponsored by the Presidential Delivery Unit and was addressed by its director Andrew Wakahiu, AGM Gakuru and Esther Juma.
Among notable attendees were former Tetu Member of Parliament Ndungu Githenji, Women Representative aspirants; Njeri Njoori, Priscila Wambaire, Ann Wanjuhi and Elizabeth Wamuyu. Others were senatorial aspirant Newton Muraya, the only Mukurwe-ini constituency MP aspirant Eng. Kariuki Wa Muchemi, Tetu parliamentary aspirant Martin Lutherking Githigaro and dozens of Member of County Assembly (MCA) aspirants.
The aspirants called on the party headquarters to ensure a free and fair nomination process.
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