ODM rules out use of secret ballot in primaries
The Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) will use the secret ballot as the last resort in the party nominations, secretary-general Edwin Sifuna said yesterday.
He told People Daily that already the party has started picking its popular candidates to various seats, adding that the party advocates for consensus, then opinion polls, delegates system and lastly universal suffrage by the bona fide registered party members.
“As a party, we have four methods of picking our candidates and IEBC has approved all of them. We have already started the nomination process. We encourage the aspirants to have a consensus and where there is no consensus, we can use an opinion poll. Science can be used sometimes to guide consensus,” said Sifuna (pictured).
“The use of secret ballot is too prohibitive. Printing of ballot papers will be too expensive. That is why we are encouraging consensus, if it fails opinion polls and if that fails to yield the candidate, we use the delegate system. We have put universal suffrage as the last resort,” explained Sifuna.
Although using the secret ballot to determine the flag bearers is a clear democratic process, ODM has cited financial constraints as to why nominations through secret ballot cannot be done across the country.
Local politics
The official cited Narok East which has 12 aspirants for the ODM ticket but the number has since reduced to four by consensus.
“We shall use a method based on the local politics and the dynamics of the area. We will only use an applicable method to have candidate fly the ODM flag,” he charged.
He further clarified that in areas where opinion polls show two aspirants have a small gap between them, and then the party will opt to have delegates system to determine who carries the day.
He, however, ruled out a secret ballot, saying that the cost is too prohibitive and in an event that the party will use universal suffrage, a secret ballot will still not be used.
Party leader Raila Odinga on Tuesday said that while ODM constitution allows it to issue direct nomination, it will only do so once they have established through various mechanisms on who is the most popular aspirant in an elective area.
