Defeated Uasin Gishu aspirants demand repeat nominations

By Judy Jerono Some of the aspirants from Uasin Gishu County who were defeated in the just concluded primaries now want a repeat citing irregularities. The aspirants who protested together with their supporters at the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) offices in Eldoret argue that a few leaders who were declared winners did not obtain the tickets legally. Willy Korir and David Songok who led other Turbo Parliamentary aspirants together with their supporters alleged that the victory of the area Member of Parliament Janet Sitienei was not fair, adding that voting was stopped in some polling stations because ballot boxes were burned. [caption id="attachment_17291" align="alignnone" width="1280"] UDA National Elections Board (NEB) Chairman Anthony Mwaura addresses the media on Thursday, April 14, 2022. |Courtesy| UDA Twitter|[/caption] "The nomination exercise we conducted was shambolic, they were not credible and there was a lot of voter manipulation and we call upon the party for a repeat of the nominations in the entire constituency because some votes from other words were burnt," they said. Julius Bitok, a Uasin Gishu gubernatorial aspirant, stated that many candidates were favoured. "We reject the results because we believe the nominations were rigged in favour of several candidates. We are aware of many malpractices and we say that the results of this elections were predetermined much earlier even before the nominations," said Bitok. " We want to call upon the party and say that we are not going to be intimidated, we will not accept any negotiations, we want free fair and credible nominations in Uasin Gishu county." He added The aspirants have threatened to take action if the UDA party ignores their call of repeating the primaries in Turbo constituency. Successful candidates in the William Ruto-led party are expected to be presented with the final nomination certificates from April 23 to April 25.