Wednesday, April 18, 2012

'Missing’ KANU certificate replaced


The party received a certified copy of the original certificate from the Registrar of Political/FILE
NAIROBI, Kenya, Apr 17 – Kenya’s independence party KANU, has cleared the way for registration, after its officials obtained a certified copy of the registration certificate following days of wrangling with Uhuru Kenyatta.
The party received a certified copy of the original certificate from the Registrar of Political moments after lodging a request on Tuesday morning.
On Monday, Secretary General Nick Salat had warned Kenyatta to surrender the original copy of the registration certificate failure to which the party would report the matter to the police.
Party insiders claim that the document which ought to have been under the custody of the former chairman ‘got lost’ in unclear circumstances.
Salat was compelled to look for a police abstract to initiate the process of applying for the certified copy.
The Political Parties Act under Article 5(5) provides that: “The provisional registration of a political party which has not applied for full registration shall lapse at the expiry of one hundred and eighty days from the date of issue of the certificate of the provisional registration.”
Article (4) of the Political Parties (Registration) Regulations, 2008 provides that: “Where an application is made for full registration of a political party, the applicants shall surrender the certificate of provisional registration to the Registrar, unless they account for its absence to his/her satisfaction by way of an affidavit and a police abstract.”
Acting Registrar Lucy Ndung’u termed the KANU case as normal and acknowledged that the party had followed the right procedure in obtaining a replacement.
“Certificates get lost but procedures to get certified copies also exist. They requested to get a copy and my office has made it available to them,” she said.
She insisted that parties which doesn’t have or fails to account for its original certificate will not be registered as no party can be allowed to hold two certificates.
KANU officials are expected to present their papers for official registration on Thursday afternoon, just six days after a special National Delegates Conference ratified a new constitution and elected Gideon Moi as interim chairman.
Kenyatta has ruled himself out of contention in the party’s elections and is expected to make his new party of choice known soon.

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