BOMET RESIDENTS DECLARE THEY HAVE MOVED TO AZIMIO LA UMOJA

A section of youths in Tenwek, Bomet County are now threatening to walk out of the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) if the party cannot guarantee a free, fair and credible nomination process.

This comes amid claims of irregularities that have marred the party’s primaries in the county.

Residents claim they have been able to access insecure ballot boxes and marked ballot papers at Tenwek, something that has raised concerns over the credibility of the party primaries in the region.

Following the claims, the youths have threatened to walk out of the party if the situation is not addressed.

The youths want the party to either postpone the exercise to another day or bring in new voting materials to guarantee the credibility of the exercise.

They have threatened that should the party fail to listen to their cry, they will be forced to shift their political allegiance to Azimio-One Kenya Coalition; UDA’s political rival.

“We want justice, can you imagine that people voted for themselves at night? And yet the party officials are still telling us to stay calm. We are asking Deputy President William Ruto to intervene in this situation because if he doesn’t, we want to tell him as the youth that if he tries forcing leaders onto us, we will welcome Raila to Bomet. It is either he chooses to postpone the nominations, make things right or let us more to Azimio,” a youth identified as Peter said.

“We as the ordinary people have gone through a lot of problems in the past five years and therefore we will not allow the party to force us into participating in an election process which has already been rigged,” he added.

The concerns by the youths come at the backdrop of some leaders from the region demanding the nominations be postponed.

The leaders led by former KNUT Secretary General Wilson Sossion have also raised rigging claims at Tenwek High School hours before the voting exercise kicked off.

Sossion who is seeking the UDA party ticket for the Bomet Senator seat said that he and other spirants impounded vehicles transporting ballot papers and boxes to unknown and insecure places. They also claim that they managed to get marked ballot papers at a polling station.

“There have been reports of insecure papers, and when we got here (Tenwek) it was very unfortunate; even the ballot papers and boxes were not secured. When we accessed them, we found that they were already marked,” Sossion said.

Courtesy