ODM leader Raila Odinga’s sister Ruth Odinga was on Tuesday, April 19, forced to flee from Uriri Primary School after chaos erupted during the ongoing ODM nominations.
The former Kisumu deputy governor had gone to the polling station to verify claims that an unidentified person was running a parallel voting exercise when the chaos erupted.
Police officers who swiftly responded to a distress call were forced to lobby teargas to disperse the rowdy youths, an incident that left one person seriously injured.
Just like UDA, voter bribery claims marred the ODM nominations in Kisumu if remarks by Kisumu Central parliamentary aspirant Elijah Oburu were anything to go by.
“We have also witnessed scenes where some aspirants are ferrying voters from one station to another to vote more than once,” Oburu said as quoted by the Daily Nation.
This was due to the fact that indelible ink, used to identify those who have already cast their votes, was not available at the polling stations.
“We are worried that this will lead to double voting among people. I hope that is not the case,” said Aggrey Mwamu, one of the aspirants and former president of the East Africa Lao Society.
Other than voter bribery and low voter turnout, there were minor cases of faulty electronic gadgets as well as delays in the commencement of the ODM nominations.
Raila’s sister who is seeking the ODM ticket to vie for Kisumu County Woman Representative had opposed his brother’s move to issue direct tickets to aspirants.
“I am opposed to a direct ticket, let’s go to the ballot… The direct ticket does not work for me,” Ruth told Citizen TV on Wednesday.
“I would go for either one of them, nomination or consensus as long as it is willingly done among aspirants and not being coerced,” she said.
