Parties led by President Uhuru Kenyatta, his deputy William Ruto and Opposition leader Raila Odinga will share the bulk of the Sh205 million in public funding. This is after the Court of Appeal dismissed a petition by smaller parties for a share of the funds, giving the money to The National Alliance, the Orange Democratic Movement and the United Republican Party. Even Wiper Democratic Movement of former Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka and Ford- Kenya led by Senate Minority Leader Moses Wetang’ula, which are in Cord with ODM, missed out on the funds meant to support political party activities. ODM will decide if it should share its money with the two partners. Under the formula for the sharing of the funds, TNA will get Sh90 million while ODM will take home Sh87.4 million. Mr Ruto’s URP will receive the remaining Sh28.2 million. Although the fund had been allocated Sh2.88 billion or 0.3 per cent of the national revenue, the Treasury only released Sh205 million. The three parties qualified for the money from the Exchequer by virtue of the votes garnered in the 2013 General Election. TNA got 21,667,938 votes, accounting for 29.74 per cent of the total votes cast while ODM came second with 19,032,997 or 29.12 per cent of the votes. URP was third with 6,843,730 or 9.39 per cent of the votes cast. These tallies reflect the votes of all the parties’ candidates— from the presidency down to ward reps — received. It means all the other parties that participated in the polls will miss out on public funding. Also missing out are United Democratic Forum, whose presidential candidate was Mr Musalia Mudavadi, and Narc-Kenya led by another presidential candidate, Martha Karua. Others are KANU led by Baringo Senator Hon. Gideon Moi and Kenya Social Congress whose presidential candidate was Mr Peter Kenneth. A party must secure at least five per cent of the total votes cast to qualify for the funding. In calculating how much money each party gets, the office of the Registrar of Political Parties lumped together all the presidential votes for the Jubilee Coalition to TNA and Cord’s figures to ODM in what is likely to cause friction within the two coalitions that contested the election. In their ruling yesterday, Court of Appeal judges Phillip Waki, GBM Kariuki and William Ouko ruled that the law was clear on the criteria for the sharing of the money, and that only the three big ones deserve funding. “Weighing competing claims, it has not been demonstrated that the success of this appeal would be useless or that the government will not avail the funds, we find no merit in this application and it is hereby dismissed,” ruled the judges. They concurred with lawyers Samuel Makori and Johnson Omboga, representing ODM and TNA, respectively, who had argued that the Jubilee and Cord coalitions were not entities that were eligible for funding.
Posted on: Sat, 18 Oct 2014 06:12:03 +0000
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