The Jubilee Party leadership has expressed its dissatisfaction with the rating of its candidates in all levels in Kajiado County.
This follows a consistent dismal performance against its Azimio La Umoja partner, ODM, and its rival, UDA.
A frustrated Secretary General Jeremiah Kioni on Tuesday read a riot act to the party’s candidates over the rating even as the party met the candidates for financial and material support.
Mr Kioni told the delegation led by Gubernatorial candidate David Nkedienye and running mate Joseph Manje that they had misled the party that they would consolidate the populous Kikuyu vote in the County for Nkedienye.
Kioni fell short of saying the party gave the ticket to Nkedienye after Manje promised to rally all the Kikuyu votes in Kajiado North behind Nkedienye just as they did in 2017 for incumbent Governor Joseph Ole Lenku.
A spat between Kioni and Nkedienye’s team also revolved around zoning, with the Kajiado team accusing the Jubilee Party of failing to Zone Off Mr Lenku from the race as had been plotted and agreed by party officials led Deputy Party Leader, Peter Mositet.
According to four internal opinion polls commissioned by the party, ODM was leading in all the constituencies followed by UDA.
None of the four Jubilee Parliamentary Candidates emerged among the top three in all the opinion polls.
The candidates are Parsimei Gitau( Kajiado North), Marina Kelly ( Kajiado East), Joseph Simel( Kajiado West) and John Parit( Kajiado South).
The party did not field a candidate in Kajiado Central.
In all the polls, Nkedienye trailed Katoo Ole Metito of UDA in a race where Lenku is leading in all the constituencies with the smallest margins being in Kajiado South and Kajiado North.
Incidentally, in Kajiado North which has the highest number of voters at 134,000 votes, Nkedienye is behind Lenku by 8 percentage points.
Lenku is leading in Kajiado East followed by Nkedienye and then Mr Metito.
According to the polls, one of them by the National Intelligence Service(NIS), the only seat Jubilee beat a UDA Candidate was the Senate where former Kajiado West MP Moses Ole Sakuda is the candidate.
ODM’s Judy Pareno is leading and is closely followed by Mr Sakuda with UDA’s Samuel Seki coming third.
Jubilee, the party officials noted, had failed to secure candidates in 10 Wards out of 25 wards, further weakening its campaign network.
It is these bleak chances against Lenku and Katoo that seemed to have rattled Kioni.
In defense, Nkedienye said the party had not supported them with resources as they had been promised.
“Daktari said they are grounded and only campaign materials have been availed. He lamented that they have not come out as candidates of a ruling party, ” says a Jubilee candidate who attended the meeting.
The meeting organized by the party, however, resolved to support the candidates with Sh 40 Million distributed as; Nkedienye Sh10 Million; Senator Sakuda Sh 7 Million, Woman Rep Simayia Rakita Sh 5 Million, four Parliamentary Candidates Sh 3 Million each and 14 MCA Candidates Sh 500,000 each.