Listen to This Article Enhance your reading experience by listening to this article.

Deputy President William Ruto’s United Democratic Alliance (UDA) National Elections Board will conduct party primaries from April 9-16 on a modest budget.

UDA becomes the first political party to set the dates to pick its candidates that will fly its flag in various seats of Member of County Assembly (MCA), National Assembly Member, Senate and Women Representative seat.

This means that the party will hold its own primaries leaving out their allies Amani National Congress (ANC) and Ford Kenya to conduct their primaries.

Yesterday, the Board’s chair Anthony Mwaura was categorical that his team will conduct free, fair, credible and transparent nominations.

“The board has had several sittings and in line with IEBC calendar wishes to announce to all aspirants that party nominations will be held on April 9 to 16.  The nominations will be held in all counties across the republic,” said Mwaura.

And in order to conduct credible party primaries, the Mwaura led board charged that there is no preferred candidate and that all the aspirants will be subjected to process so that only those who win fly the party’s flag in the polls.

Face verdict

“There will be no boardroom dealings to pick any candidate under UDA. We wish to remind the aspirants to campaign and engage their electorate. We will only announce the winner from a free, fair process,” said Mwaura.

Mwaura also ruled out any issuing any direct ticket to an aspirant unless there is only one aspirant who has paid the requisite fees and is a registered member of the party.

“This means the party has no preferred aspirant and it has not set aside any direct ticket. All aspirants will face Wanjiku’s verdict on nominations day,” said Mwaura.

According to the new Political Parties Amendment Act, only registered members certified by the Registrar of Political Parties can take part in a nomination exercise slated for April this year.

The party’s polls team said that they had netted more than six million registered members of the UDA party who will take part in the nominations exercise.

 “We have about six million registered party members who will take part in the nomination process,” said Mwaura.