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Jubilee Party has announced that it will conduct its primary nominations on Monday and Tuesday across all counties in the country.
This follows a chaotic first day of nominations on Friday in 21 counties that saw voters burn ballots out of anger, shortage of votes, and aspirants for various seats angry over perceived efforts to rig them out. The party resulted to cancelling nominations in all those 21 counties.
Jubilee Party secretary general Raphael Tuju on Friday took responsibility for the botched nomination and apologized to Jubilee supporters and aspirants, saying “ I will take responsibility for the mess. These things took place under my watch. I will work to ensure our supporters get a chance to elect the leaders they prefer to fly Jubilee’s flag.”
President Uhuru Kenyatta later on Saturday addressed the media after meeting with Raphael Tuju and other party leaders at State House. Uhuru said the chaos were caused by unexpected high turnout in most polling stations. He said Jubilee’s National Elections Board had estimated voter turnout of 25% in some polling centers but more then 70% turned out to vote, which led to shortage of ballots and other logistics.
“Primaries usually do not experience the kind of large turn out that we saw yesterday…we were hit by a huge shortage of voting materials,” he said, and pleaded with party supporters to remain calm and prepare for the next exercise, we will adequately prepare this time round,” the president assured Jubilee supporters and aspirants.
A comprehensive schedule of the nomination exercise in all counties is expected to be released soon, as Jubilee works to beat the April 26th deadline set by IEBC for parties to conclude their nominations.