Transparency won

Transparency during ODM nominations contributed to its success in Shinyalu and Bomachoge by-elections, party officials say.

Deputy Prime Minister Musalia Mudavadi said on Friday that ODM easily won the seat because the party had read the political mood on the ground correctly and conducted nominations to pick its candidates.

Mr Mudavadi, who is also an ODM deputy party leader, said other parties in the race for the two seats, including Kaddu and PNU, did not carry out nominations at the grassroots to test the popularity of their candidates and said this cost them.

“Although we had problems after our party nominations, ODM was able to practise internal democracy by allowing voters in Shinyalu to pick a popular candidate to run on our party ticket,” said Mr Mudavadi, who is also the Local Government minister.

He said although some unsuccessful aspirants faulted the nominations, the party managed to weather the storm and retained the parliamentary seat.

For its part, PNU gave different reasons for its losses in Shinyalu and Bomachoge.

Party activist Stanley Livondo claimed that police were used to frustrate the PNU campaign team in Shinyalu and intimidate its supporters to not go to vote.

“We have established that the police had instructions from a senior government official to arrest our party agents to scare away our supporters, and that gave our opponents an advantage in our strongholds,” he said. He claimed that a senior ODM official had issued instructions to police to harass PNU agents and supporters at polling stations.

Mr Livondo said his party was seeking to have a senior police officer punished over the alleged harassment and arrest of party agents.
In Bomachoge, PNU branch chairman Evans Onyancha alleged ODM used vote buying and bribery to beat PNU.

“We mobilised our campaign properly and cannot exactly tell where we failed,” Mr Onyancha said.

Education minister Sam Ongeri, who spearheaded the PNU campaign in Bomachoge, said the defeat was a blow to the party.

“We are going to regroup and re-energise our party following what happened in both Bomachoge and in Shinyalu,” he said.