Politicians
employ huge financial resources in campaigns
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Updated Saturday, June
23 2012 at 21:24 GMT+3
The race to State House
has committed presidential aspirants to cutthroat competition, with most
criss-crossing the country in helicopters to popularise their bids.
It is a mad rush that
perhaps exposed Internal Security minister and PNU presidential aspirant George
Saitoti to calamity two weeks ago. Even as he boarded the ill-fated chopper,
alongside Assistant Minister Orwa Ojode, Saitoti was not the only high-profile
politician at Nairobi’s Wilson Airport.
Others, including Prime
Minister Raila Odinga, were also headed to the countryside for campaigns. With
their diaries full every weekend, Wilson Airport has lately become a busy
dispatch point for presidential aspirants and their campaign teams.
They gather in the morning to fly out to
different corners of the country for campaigns fashioned as funerals, funds
drives or home-coming parties. Yet still other political parties have separate
aspirants campaigning independently for a nomination ticket. This is the case
with the United Republican Party (URP), where Eldoret North MP William Ruto and
his Lugari counterpart, Cyrus Jirongo, are battling it out for the nomination
slot.
Mr Jirongo, who occasionally meets his competitor at Wilson
Airport en route to their separate locations, concedes the campaign is a
laborious and expensive affair. He has lately claimed that Mr Ruto enjoys
funding from State House operatives. The relationship between the two is no
longer rosy.
With a couple of months left to the polls, presidential aspirants
are leaving nothing to chance. What further makes the campaigns intense are
provisions of the new Constitution, which make it hard for one to be eligible
to vie for president, and even harder to be declared president-elect.
Besides obtaining endorsement of 2,000 voters from at least 24 of
47 counties before getting clearance from the electoral body to run for
presidency, one must command an absolute majority of the national vote.
Even more challenging is the requirement that a candidate must
garner 25 per cent of the votes cast in at least 24 counties to be declared
president-elect. Owing to the high threshold and competition expected in a
crowded field, many have opted for helicopters to traverse the airspace in a
bid to cover the expansive country within the remaining few days. The PM,
Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka, Deputy Prime Ministers Uhuru Kenyatta and
Musalia Mudavadi, assistant minister Peter Kenneth, and MPs Ruto and Jirongo
all travel by air. Alongside their campaign teams, largely made up of MPs, the
hopefuls fork out millions weekly to hire choppers.
Meanwhile, Mudavadi, who entered the race recently after pulling
out of the Orange party, hopes to combine the chopper tours and whistle
stops. The latter is a campaign style where the candidate makes a series
of brief roadside appearances and speeches to a small number of supporters.
“The DPM is interested in meeting and engaging with the people
directly, hence this strategy. And unlike choppers where one parachutes into a
location for a rally and on to another, whistle stops offer a better
meet-the-people opportunity and in the long-run allow an even bigger area
coverage,” says Mr Kibisu Kabatesi, Mudavadi’s spokesman.
Noting that the country is expansive, Konoin MP Julius Kones, who
has set his eyes on the Governor’s seat in Bomet County, opines that contenders
for the presidency have a huge task ahead.
He says presidential aspirants have little time left to comb all
villages and interact with the country’s 40 million people.
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