Each party is allowed to send a certain number of people directly to the House to represent special interests. But parties may well use those slots to provide a soft landing for bigwigs humiliated in the primaries.
Parties now have until January 24 to give the lists, according to an SMS sent to party officials by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC).
GNU party leader Mwangi Kiunjuri said: “They (IEBC) extended the deadline for those to be nominated by political parties to the 24th (Thursday). These are the people to be nominated, not elected in the primaries.”
But parties had until midnight Monday to submit their final lists of candidates nominated for the various seats in the primaries. These are the lists of party candidates who will fight it out in the March 4 election.
But there are seats in the county assemblies, the National Assembly and Senate which will be filled without voting, that is, by nomination.
Each party is required to submit, in order of importance, a list of 12 members they would pick for the free seats in the National Assembly. The list has to have an equal number of men and women.
They will also be required to submit a list of 20 would-be nominees to the Senate. This will comprise 16 women, two persons with disabilities and two youth, each of the last with an equal number of women and men.
On Monday, scores of disgruntled aspirants thronged the two tents set up by the IEBC at its head office at Anniversary Towers in Nairobi to file their disputes.
The complainants were directed to file their cases with their political parties as the IEBC would be the last resort. And last night, political parties were rushing to present their lists to the IEBC. By 5pm, a steady stream of parties had presented their lists of candidates.
Earlier, the commissioners led by chairman Issack Hassan met President Kibaki to brief him on preparations for the General Election.
The meeting at Harambee House reviewed the political parties’ nomination process and the lessons learnt ahead of the March 4 General Election.
A statement from the Presidential Press Service said the Head of State instructed all security agencies to take steps to ensure that all stages leading to the elections were peaceful and that decisive action be taken against lawbreakers whatever their status in society.
The IEBC informed the President that an aggressive voter education process would begin within a week and that preparations for the elections were going on according to schedule. - Daily Nation
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