Independent Electoral and Boundary Commission (IEBC) officials are on high gear to clear nine political aspirants to campaign in the hotly contested Kisumu Central parliamentary seat ahead of the August general election.
Kisumu Central IEBC returning officer Yegon Kibos said that only one out of the nine aspirants eyeing the national parliamentary seats belonged to a political party while the rest were independent candidates.
According to Kibos, the majority of the aspirants have decided to go independent after failing to clinch various political party tickets during the nominations conducted in April.
The sub-county is largely dominated by the Orange Democratic Party (ODM) under the stewardship of Raila Odinga.
So far, IEBC Kisumu Central constituency office has cleared four contestants among them the ODM ticket candidate Joshua Oron and three other independent candidates.
The office started the clearance exercise of candidates for the position of MP on June 1 at 2:30 am and is expected to run for three days.
While addressing the press Wednesday morning, Kibos stated that those aspiring to be members of the County Assembly are 41 in number and were scheduled to present their nomination papers between June 1 and 7.
The Returning Officer applauded the leadership of the IEBC for rising up to the tasks to resolve the system failure issue witnessed at the commencement of the verification exercise.
He admitted that system failure was experienced nationwide and has been reinstated making the process, especially in Kisumu Central, efficient.
“The system is very smooth compared to the previous ones. We can attend to five people per day and even more. We are very proud of the improvements made on the system,” he noted.
According to Kibos, the access to the systems’ domain was upgraded overnight and is now quick for verification of aspirants’ documents aligned with protocols as every returning officer’s gadget is given different routes for various positions.
With the constituency having six wards, it has over 120,000 voters within Kisumu Central boundaries and aspirants are to solicit for signatures from their supporters as one of the IEBC requirements.
Kibos added that they were keen on the IEBC guidelines for a candidate to be cleared as he hinted that the exercise saw some candidates turned away for failure to meet the requirements.
An aspirant fails to be cleared if they are not a registered voter, is out of the timeline set by IEBC, or if they don’t have duly filled required forms and a threshold of supporters uploaded in an excel format provided by the Commission.
He noted that among the challenges faced by aspirants was the number of forms submitted to the IEBC with MCAs and MPs required to submit a minimum of 500 and 1000 respectively.
He applauded the aspirants for embracing peace as they proved to be civil and loyal during the process conducted by the Commission.
