County system is party's, not DPM, idea

Source: standard

Delegates system, world over, is used by political parties to nominate flag bearers, though it varies in terms of actual methods. The US, for instance, uses the caucus method, where party officials become the Electoral College or ordinary party members vote and the winner is known State-by-State.

Here, Deputy Prime Minister Musalia Mudavadi is championing ODM sub-branch officials to become the Electoral College at the counties. He wants each county to have 60 officials from sub-branches (constituencies). The county delegates will therefore be 60 times the number of sub-branches.

The largest county Kakamega, with nine sub-branches, will have 540 delegates voting through secret ballot at the county level. Lamu, the smallest, with two sub-branches, will have 120. Therefore, the 210 constituencies will produce 12,600 delegates.

DPM’s stand is simple and candid: Let the 58 (20 mainstream, 19 women and 19 youth) ODM officials at the sub-branches become the Electoral College and vote at that level. The voting will be through secret ballot and probably supervised by IEBC. There will be only 47 polling stations voting on the same day and the method is more cost-effective.

At no time has Mudavadi claimed to be the originator of this method as claimed by an ODM leader on a recent national TV talk show. He is merely articulating a method already proposed by the party National Executive Committee and the Parliamentary Group and approved by the National Governing Council. It is also the preference of grassroots officials.

The only prudent thing is to ratify the method at National Delegates Conference, and anyone opposed to the method is hypocritical and reneging on a democratic process. 

Unrepresentative system

The party constitution provides for about eight delegates from each constituency totalling to 1,680. Although ODM has 20 youth and 20 women officials at every sub-branch, the current method will only make them passengers as only one youth and woman can go to the NDC.

Political parties prefer to ferry  selected officials from the branches to a central place to vote. The system has proven to be illogical, unrepresentative, and is open to abuse.

ODM has been fashioning itself on the US system of nomination where the largest number possible of officials participate in decision-making. There is no greater decision in a party than how to choose its flag bearer. We are also a party of devolution. The more officials involved, the greater the commitment to and ownership of the presidential candidate.

It is with this wisdom that ODM embarked on review of the constitution to align it to the Constitution of Kenya, the Electoral Act and the Political Parties Act 2011.