TNA cancels Kilifi South, Malindi constituency nomination results

MONDAY, JANUARY 21, 2013 - 00:00 -- BY ELIAS YAA

TNA has cancelled the results of the Kilifi South parliamentary seat citing anomalies.

National organising secretary Patrick Birya, who led a team from the party's national election board sent to resolve nominations disputes, the results cannot be certified because the candidate pronounced winner may have used fraudulent means to have himself declared winner.

The team heard the complaints at a Kilifi hotel on Saturday. It ruled that the winner of the party ticket to vie for the Kilifi South parliamentary seat, Shadrack Lewa, should be disqualified.

The team said Lewa’s wife was a member of the party’s committee in the constituency which is against the party constitution. “It is also not possible for a station that has 200 registered voters to get 800 people to vote. Our election was supposed to focus on the registered voters per the IEBC register,” said Birya.

Birya further faulted the election team led by the TNA elections coordinator in Kilifi county Francis Kalume for fixing the results based on tribal grounds.

In his complaint, Omar Masumbuko, who had lost in the primaries said that Margret Safari was the rightful winner for the parliamentary position but the election officials changed the results.

Birya further nullified the interim certificate issued to Lewa and another for the Malindi parliamentary seat until the complaints are settled by the Aaron Ringer-led complaints committee.

TNA director of political affairs Abdi Diba said the final resolutions for the various complaints shall be delivered today. Malindi parliamentary aspirant Atassi Shariff Ali had complained that his opponent Edward Karani used his vehicles to transport the election materials to and from the polling centres.

He further complained that in some polling stations the voters who participated were more than the registered. He accused his opponent for ferrying voters and bribing them to vote for him.