Politicians who resigned to join other parties keep their office

Registrar of Political Parties Anne Nderitu now says her office cannot initiate the process of removing from office elected leaders who resign from political parties that sponsored them at the last election.

Nderitu says the focus of the office for now is to facilitate Kenyans their rights to belong to parties of their choice.

This as close to one million Kenyans resigned from various political parties they’re believed to have been enlisted in without their consent.

With just over two weeks to the deadline for political parties to beef up their membership recruitment ahead of the general election, the Registrar of Political Parties has been busy receiving and processing requests for transfer of party allegiances.

Part of those shifting parties are elected leaders. By law, they should lose their seats. But the registrar says it takes a process.

“It’s a process, for which the starting point could be moving from one political party to another. But there are many other different processes…for this office, we want to concentrate mostly on political rights…Kenyans have a right to move from one political party to another…other institutions of government should do their part,” she said.

Two weeks ago, the Jubilee Party National Delegates Convention (NDC) resolved to remove from the party’s register persons that had since shifted allegiance to other parties.

Key among those were Deputy President William Ruto who now leads the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) party brigade.

The registrar however says that such a declaration has no force of law until filed with her office and considered on whether it followed the laid out procedure.

“It’s one thing for an NDC to pass a resolution, and another if they followed the due process. Unless resolutions are filed with the Registrar, it’s impossible to confirm whether the due process was followed,” said Nderitu.

Jubilee Secretary General Jeremiah Kioni has threatened to cause action against persons that have left the Jubilee party.

“I will write letters to the county assemblies, asking them that they remain faithful to the law and the provisions of the law, because the same must be triggered by the party, and that is what we will do. Evidence of having moved on is the payment that was made and the receipt that was issued by the party,” said Kioni.

The law however does not allow filling of an elective seat three months to a general election. Meaning, even if the affected leaders were to be removed from their seats, it is highly unlikely that a by-election would be held.

According to the Registrar, nearly one million Kenyans have resigned from their parties, majority believed to have been enlisted without their consent.

So far there are just over 24 million Kenyans registered in political parties, some of them not registered as voters in the IEBC register that before clean-up has just over 22 million registered voters.

The parties now working around the clock to clean up their registers before submitting to the Registrar for certification by March 26.

Robert Waithaka, Head of IT at the office of the Registrar, said: “The first thing that we’ll do is to run that register submitted by political parties against the one that we maintain…and then we’ll be able to notify the political party that, for example, out of a thousand members registered by that party, 100 are already registered in other parties.”

Political parties will only be allowed to use the certified registers to conduct their party nominations especially where members will be required to vote in person.