ODM party\u2019s National Executive Council (NEC) will disqualify aspirants who instigate violence during campaigns in the anticipated party\u2019s April preliminaries ahead of August elections.<\/strong><\/p>\nThis comes just days after the Luo Council of elders, the Mbita branch, called on to ODM as the dominant party in the Nyanza region to bar violent aspirants from contesting for any seats.<\/p>\n
ODM national chairperson John Mbadi stated that the NEC had issued directives to the National Elections Board that is chaired by Catherine Muma, to find tangible grounds to disqualify candidates who fuel violence before or during the party nominations.<\/p>\n
Mbadi who was speaking to KNA in Homa Bay explained that the move was an attempt to bring peace and sanity to the party and especially during nominations.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor years ODM has been branded as chaotic and violent during nominations and we are about to change this narrative as we have directed the board to first eliminate violent aspirants to pave way for other contenders,\u201d stated Mbadi.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn as much as the aim of preliminaries is to ensure the party emerges victorious at the end of the day, peace, fairness, and democracy would still be maintained,\u201d added the Suba South Member of Parliament.<\/p>\n
In December, during Raila Odinga\u2019s visit to Homa Bay boys\u2019 high school to preside over Wanga Genowa NGAAF tournament 2021, the party leader had stated that the first procedure the party would bank on for the preliminaries would be a consensus among candidates.<\/p>\n
He explained that all aspirants eyeing a similar seat would be sat down by the party to allow them to agree on a single contender who would carry the flag.<\/p>\n
Odinga added that this would go a long way in preventing violence that would otherwise result from picking a single candidate.<\/p>\n
If this fails, the candidates would be subjected to a voting process by registered party members as many times as possible to ensure the satisfaction of all the aspirants with the results.<\/p>\n
Odinga however reiterated that law gives room for the party to issue a certificate to a candidate through direct nominations without going through the voting process.<\/p>\n
\u201cDirect nomination of candidates will only be done as a last resort if all the other procedures fail or we are pressing against IEBC\u2019s timeline,\u201d stated the former Prime Minister.<\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ODM party\u2019s National Executive Council (NEC) will disqualify aspirants who instigate violence during campaigns in the anticipated party\u2019s April preliminaries ahead of August elections. This comes just days after the Luo Council of elders, the Mbita branch, called on to ODM as the dominant party in the Nyanza region to bar violent aspirants from contesting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3257,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[154],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-popular-news","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kenyaleo.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kenyaleo.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kenyaleo.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenyaleo.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenyaleo.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenyaleo.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3258,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenyaleo.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3255\/revisions\/3258"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenyaleo.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kenyaleo.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenyaleo.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenyaleo.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}