Uda Party Engages In Door-To-Door Campaigns In Mountain Region

With less than two weeks remaining to the general elections, main presidential candidates are changing their campaign strategies to win many votes, mostly in highly contested areas like the Mountain Region of Kenya. The choice of running mates by the two presidential election frontrunners, William Ruto and Raila Odinga from Mt Kenya was high most strategy; this has raised the stakes in the vote hunt in three key regions and also introduced a gender card in the President Uhuru Kenyatta succession.

Deputy President William Ruto’s UDA party has laid a strategy to ensure that over 99 per cent of registered voters will participate in the August 9 elections. The party aims at dealing with the information going round that Mt Kenya registered voters might not turn out in large numbers to participate in the general election.

However, UDA Lari parliamentary candidate Mburu Kahangara said if the region will ignore voting, then its strength will not be felt. He said if 30 percent of registered voters of a county like Kiambu which has over 1.4 million registered voters fail to turn up; it means losing like 300,000 votes. Kahangara said that since residents already know the candidates and their parties, the remaining time would be utilized to convince them that participating in the election would determine the type of government and leaders they will have for the next five years. Kahangara urged residents to vote for a party with a presidential candidate so as to form a strong government.

“We have laid a strategy of meeting the electorates where they are. We are doing door-to-door campaigns, meeting groups and other forms of gatherings. We want to ensure over 99 per cent of them have participated in the elections,” he said.

Mbiyu wa Njenga, a politician, says since there was no strong presidential candidate from Mt Kenya region, residents might not take the election seriously and may fail to come out in large numbers.

“A president needs MPs so that he can have a strong legislature. Consider voting for the DP as the next president, since his party is all over the country even if it has other parties supporting it” he said.

The candidate also rubbished the move by the government to lower the price of maize flour until after the elections.

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“The move to lower the price of maize flour until after the election is political so that people can vote for the government’s preferred candidate who is Raila Odinga and people will not go in that direction.” he said.

Raila, who is running on Azimio la Umoja coalition, is competing with Ruto among other presidential aspirants.