Presidential candidate Nazlin Umar [PHOTO/nation.co.ke]
Presidential candidates going as independents will pray they are not locked out by IEBC after the electoral commission resorted to follow the law to the latter.
According to IEBC, every independent presidential candidate must produce signatures of 48,000 supporters with at least 2,000 coming from a majority of the counties.
The law also adds that these supporters should not belong to any political party.
The complex part is that the hopefuls will persevere headache since at the moment, IEBC has not released registers of party mmbers and therefore these candidates cannot tell who from their signature providers is not a member of a party.
A number of hopefuls were furious over this latest move, with some like Nazlin Umar threatening to go to court to challenge IEBC.
“Clearly, IEBC has set a trap to rule out independent candidates in Kenya,” she said.
She said that from the requirements set by IEBC, each candidate now needs to have the registers of all political parties so they can verify that those who offer to sign the nomination forms are not party members of other political outfits.
“It is nonsense and IEBC has no business checking the details of the voters,” said Ms Umar.
Another independent Muthiora Kariara lamented about this:
“You’ll be getting very negative reactions on this point.”
Dr Jeff Kaluyu, another candidate, said he had arrived from his home in the United States with just 48 hours remaining to the meeting, adding that the provision could lock out over 90 per cent of the aspirants.
“The IEBC should consider and accommodate us. They can always extend the deadline because they had not told us about this,” said Kaluyu.