UDA: Aspirants who participated in burning of election materials to be prosecuted

Elgeyo Marakwet Senator Kipchumba Murkomen, who was dispatched to Embu by the UDA National Elections Board on Thursday ahead of the party primaries, called for speedy investigations into the matter to prosecute the perpetrators.

“I have been requested by the National Elections Board to come here and tell our aspirants that anyone who will be caught participating in any kind of violence will be disqualified without hesitation,” he said.

“In the fullness of time we will make sure that the Directorate of Criminal Investigations and Director of Public Prosecutions bring all the perpetrators to justice.”

This comes after a lorry transporting ballot material to Embu County ahead of the UDA party’s primaries slated for Thursday was on Wednesday ransacked by rowdy youth who set the material on fire.

The youth, reports say, tracked the lorry from Mbeere South, which is 15 kilometres away from Embu, to Izaak Walton Hotel, where they pillaged the material and set it ablaze.

The party’s disciplinary committee has since summoned Norman Nyaga and John Muchiri over the incident.

Murkomen has in the meantime assured that the party primaries in Embu county shall go on as planned even as a section of leaders in other regions call for the nullification of the exercise amid rigging claims.

“Elections will go on regardless of whether there are a few people suffering from election fever and scared of losing,” he added.

In Bomet County, aspirants raised rigging claims at Tenwek High School just hours after the exercise kicked off on Thursday morning, wanting the exercise to be called off.

Led by Former KNUT Secretary General Wilson Sossion, the leaders claimed they had been able to access insecure ballot boxes and marked ballot papers at Tenwek, raising concerns over the credibility of the party primaries in the region.