If this is the sign of things to come then we are in deep trouble. I have as a result decided not to exercise my democratic right to participate in the primaries for reasons that will be clear shortly.
Someone, actually the usual suspects, have cheated us…………………………..AGAIN!! We have been cheated that there have been party primary nominations that have been carried out over two days. The deadline for carrying out these nominations and submitting names to the IEBC so that they can go on with the business of informing the printers the details of those that will be on the ballot papers at the Kenyan general election has been pushed forward by 3 days. 3 days! Do we have the luxury of such time considering that the timelines are so tight or is this another conspiracy for the incumbent to stay on in office for an additional period of time? I don’t trust these jokers!!
While the presidential nominees and their running mates for all the parties contesting the forthcoming general elections are sitting pretty in the knowledge that their names are a foregone conclusion on the ballot paper since all they had to do was attend a national delegates caucus that endorsed them as the presidential candidates of their parties, it is left to ‘Wanjiku’ and her brothers and sisters to fight it out at the grassroots trying to clinch that all important nomination ticket of their party of choice.
This business of leaving the primaries to the last possible day to me stunk to high heaven and of a conspiracy. A conspiracy to knock out some popular candidates and impose those same old dinosaurs that everyone wants seen led to pasture to graze out their remaining days in peace and relative obscurity. It works this way.
Musa might be the most popular candidate for the post of Senator/Governor/MP etc in a county , but he does not have the support and blessings of the kingmakers of his party. Otiende on the other hand may be a very unpopular candidate with some pockets of support within his area but has ‘greeted’ the powers that be and has been promised an automatic nomination at the primaries. However in this era of heightened scrutiny, this cannot be given out openly. So what do you do?
The trick is to push the primaries to the last possible day and then ensure that the areas where Otiende enjoys some semblance of support get their ballot papers early and the nominations are conducted in an orderly fashion with minimal disruption. The ballots for the areas where Musa enjoys support are late/incomplete/few/none existent etc, therefore ensuring that these areas are mired in confusion and controversy and nominations take place in a clumsy and shambolic manner if at all. This almost guarantees that Otiende will clinch the party nomination ticket not because he was the most popular but because he was the candidate of choice for the kingmakers whom he had ‘seen’ earlier on during the campaigns and whose win has been engineered by making the nomination process of the most popular candidate almost impossible in the areas where he enjoys support. In any case which court of law (if the matter ever got there which it will not) would rule that Otiende was not legitimately nominated considering that the process was conducted in an orderly manner free of rigging as opposed to the other camp where the order of the day was noisy confusion and crude improvisation!
If the above feat is accomplished within the first day, the nominations are closed for that electoral area and declared a runaway success. If this does not happen on the first day, then the party bigwigs announce that there was too much confusion and that the nominations have to be repeated the next day so that the conspiracy on how to ensure the ‘preferred’ candidate wins the primaries is made fool-proof overnight. If there was some semblance of a nomination on day one then the formula on how to rig the numbers in favor of the preferred candidate is hatched again overnight.
Though the losing candidates have the right of appeal through the respective parties, the fact that the nomination dates have been pushed by a day means that you have no recourse to a court of law since they do not sit on the weekend. In addition the appeals will all be heard on Monday at the party level and drag on the whole day while your party is supposed to hand in the list of nominees for the various parties by the same Monday which means that Musa will be left high and dry and with little option but to throw in the towel since he has no way of joining another party because the nominations period closed the previous week and he has no one to appeal to since the party mechanism has effectively locked him out and ensured he can go nowhere else.
This is the reason I have decided not to exercise my right to nominate someone at the primaries on the second day (having been caught out at the last minute on the first day as I went to my poliing station. In any case I was told nothing happened and no voting took place) despite holding a valid party card and a being a valid registered and confirmed voter because I do not wish to be part of the wicked games that politicians play and be used as a pawn in their shameful schemes. They do not care about the injustices perpetrated on the hapless Musa’s of the political world whose only crime was not to ‘greet’ those that mattered, or the threats of possible violence when the supporters of Musa now alive to what has happened decide to protest vehemently only to be tear gassed and baton charged by the riot police…….or shot as happened somewhere.
And that is how the same tired, boring faces will be on the ballot papers fighting it out to clinch that seat. But all is not lost because their behavior at the primaries should not go unpunished and the backlash should hit them on Election Day and cause them massive humiliation which is what they deserve.
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