A Kiambaa parliamentary seat aspirant is up in arms over a current trend where widows are picked by political parties to succeed their husbands.
The aspirant, Charles Munyui, has now called on the ruling party, Jubilee, to conduct a transparent and fair primary in Kiambaa to pick their candidate in the race to the late Paul Koinange’s seat.
A governance expert, Munyui also urged other parties to abandon the trend of settling on widows and relatives of fallen politicians as flagbearers in political contests.
In Kibra and Juja constituencies,Orange Democratic Movement and Jubilee Party picked kin of fallen MPs, a brother and widow respectively, to run for the vacant seats.
“In Kibra, the current MP assisted his brother for over three years when he was sick and that is the same case in Juja when Francis Waititu was ill for many years. You could expect that his wife had technically taken over and that makes her justified to vie for MP but Kiambaa’s case is different, Koinange only got ill for two weeks, let the process to get a candidate be free and fair,” Munyui said.
He said there should be a law that empowers Speakers of both Houses to appoint an MP from a neighbouring constituency to take charge of affairs in an electoral area when the lawmaker representing the area dies.
“We could save money by avoiding by-elections some months to the General Election. The law should give the Speaker of the Senate and of the National Assembly powers to appoint an MP from a neighbouring Constituency to take over the management of the electoral area,” he said.
