Jubilee to disqualify candidates with questionable academic papers

President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Jubilee party has issued a stern warning to all its aspirants with questionable academic credentials saying they will be rejected.

According to the party’s Secretary General, Raphael Tuju, Jubilee will not risk presenting to the electoral commission candidates who are likely to be rejected.

“If we find out that the university certificate was forged even after you have gone through the nomination process, we will disqualify you, because we do not want to run the risk of going to IEBC with a candidate that will be rejected,” said Tuju.

This means that all candidates who sail through the nominations will still have to scale the requisite academic and integrity eligibility bar to be enforced a multi-agency team which includes the Ministry of Education’s certification agencies, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, the Attorney General’s office, IEBC, among other bodies.

The party has also announced a last-minute decision to split its primaries into two.

The party’s National Elections Board Chairman, Andrew Musangi, announced that the party will hold its first primaries on Friday, April 21 in 23 counties, while the remaining 21 counties will hold their primaries on Tuesday, April 25.

“This executive decision was reached at by the NEB first and foremost to reduce pressure on our logistics team and staff, because with increasing competition including in areas where we anticipated marginal competition, we realize that we have to hold primaries there,” said Musangi.

Initially, Jubilee intended to hold nominations in only 33 counties, but now says competitive counties have increased to 45.

“Only Kisumu and Siaya will have no nominations because we have solitary candidates there. Where there is no competition, there is no need for the primaries.”

In the new changes, the Friday primaries will be held in Nairobi, the Mt Kenya and the Rift Valley regions, while the second round of the nominations on Tuesday will be held in Western Kenya, Ukambani and Northern Kenya.

Addressing journalists at the party headquarters in Nairobi, Musangi also said the board has hired 12,000 returning officers to carry out the exercise, and will use the party’s register which will be backed up by the IEBC register used in the 2013 polls.

He says all the winners in the primaries will be gazetted after the exercise.