Chaos as ODM cancels nominations in two counties

dennis kibet

April 18, 2017 2:18 PM

Thousands of ballot papers allocated to a polling centre in Kitengela had gone missing.

Orange Democratic Movement supporters at a past rally.

The Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) was forced to cancel its primaries in two counties after chaos and anomalies were detected in the exercises.

In Kitengela ward, Kajiado, security officers were called in to maintain peace at the St Monica Church polling station after the ward representative aspirants refused to take part in the nominations, citing irregularities in the ballot papers.

According to them, thousands of ballot papers allocated to the polling centre had gone missing.

The aspirants feared that the ballot papers will be marked secretly in favour of one of them.

Sources indicate that the voting was postponed after certain persons helping the driver whose vehicle was stuck in the mud took off with the papers.

In Nakuru County, the Nakuru West ODM nominations were called off indefinitely after anomalies were detected on the ballot papers.

Omission of names

The names of parliamentary aspirants Erick ogada and Luka Ogetii were missing from ballot papers distributed on Tuesday.

Their supporters demanded answers from the elections board on why some of the names were not there.

Ogada and three of his supporters were later arrested for being in possession of crude weapons during the exercise.

Aspiring women representative Beatrice Onsongo who was battling it out with Aisha Rashid for the ODM ticket was equally shocked after her name was omitted from the ballot papers.

ODM County chairman Peter Ole Osono and his coordinator Raymond Ochieng said after consulting with the party's National Elections Board, they decided to postpone the primaries until after the issue was sorted out.

"We could not continue with the nominations in Nakuru Town West because the names of the candidates were missing from the ballot papers yet they had been cleared," Ochieng said.

The official accused some members of the party of frustrating the exercise.

dennis kibet