Raila and Mudavadi in conversation/FILE
NAIROBI, Kenya Apr 4 – The ODM National Executive Council (NEC) on Wednesday agreed to repeal a controversial clause in the party’s Constitution which guaranteed the party leader which the Raila Odinga holds to be the automatic presidential flag bearer.
This latest move vindicates Deputy Prime Minister Musalia Mudavadi as he has been pushing for the repeal of the clause that stipulates that the party leader is the automatic presidential candidate in a general election.
Many ODM supporters will be happy to see an end to the stalemate that dogged party which had failed to agree on the mode of nominations to use to select their flag bearer for the presidential seat.
A source within the party confirmed this to Capital FM News and said that the Legal Committee was tasked with fast tracking the report.
He said the party had also agreed that the nominations will be done at the constituency level with 58 delegates expected to represent each constituency.
Speaking after a five hour meeting which was attended by both Prime Minister Raila Odinga and his deputy Musalia Mudavadi who are the frontrunners for the party ticket, Party Secretary General Anyang Nyongo said the NEC will meet with legal committee again next week to settle the matter.
“These nominations and election rules affect the many parts of the constitution; we have spent a lot of time discussing in detail the election and nomination rules and so the legal committee has to go and look into the constitution very carefully so that no clause contradicts another,” he said.
The Party’s Legal Committee is to look into the nomination rules upon finalizing its report, the Legal team will submit it to the NEC which shall be called soon after Easter for deliberation by members.
“We have made further recommendations to the Committee to finalise that report which we shall be discussing next week after the Easter for on ward discussion to the National Governing Council (NGC), and then to the National Delegates Congress (NDC) for adoption,” he said after the conclusion of the meeting held on Wednesday.
He added that NEC’s recommendation to the higher decision making organs will ratify with finality; the two thorny issues of the nomination and election rules and the amendments suggested by out NEC to our Constitution.
Prime Minister Raila Odinga had earlier in the day said it was up to the ODM’s National Executive Meeting that’s meeting today to decide whether the party constitution will be amended to allow Musalia Mudavadi to oppose his bid for the presidency in the party primaries.
Odinga told a talk show on Citizen TV that he did not want to talk about the issue since the party top brass is holding a meeting today to decide on the controversial issue.
Meanwhile, Nyongo said the party will also seek to harmonize all nominations rules for all the elective positions; President, Governor, Senator, MP, Women and County representatives.
He said they want to present nomination rules and regulations for all these posts which will be user friendly to its members.
“The elections this year will be very complicated, and presents a lot of complicated issues to political parties. We want to make sure that we harmonise the nominations to all these offices. We want to make sure that our members are not subjected to a very complicated process of nominations,” Nyongo said.
“Even the IEBC itself has been having problems trying to find out how this election will be carried out,” he added.
Nyongo further said that the party will on Thursday submit their party membership list to the Registrar of Political Parties in a bid to comply the Political Parties Act.
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