Prof. Christine Mango frustrated in ODM primaries

IMMEDIATE outgoing Butula MP Prof. Christine Mango seems to have been frustrated in her bid to recapture her parliamentary seat during the ODM primaries last week.

Mango who intended to defend her seat on the party ticket faced a forest of ten other aspirants who were seeking the seat but says she was deliberately frustrated by both men who were supervising the exercise and those contesting since she was the only woman.

"My people discovered ballot papers marked in my favour thrown out the window of the counting halls in several polling centres but no one seemed to listen to me even as a raised my case," says the former legislator.

Mango says that the returning Officer Mr. Joel Rajula declined to listen to her complaint despite the fact that she was showing him and other officers the ballot papers that had been removed from ballot boxes.

"The officers who oversaw the exercise made a mockery of electioneering process and exhibited total disregard to the legal framework of the party guidelines," says Mango.

Mango points out that one of the male candidates hired gangs at Lugulu polling station which whipped and intimidated women aspirants as others were even chased away from polling stations without voting.

Mango adds that her agents were chased away from Bulwani polling station for supporting an agent of a civic aspirant while at Busire; she was ejected and barred from entering the polling station by violent goons.

She notes that ballot papers marked in her favour were removed from the ballot boxes and either shredded, mutilated or rolled and thrown through the window from; Lugulu, Bulwani, Bwaliro, Sirembe, Siribo, Buhuyi and Butula polling stations.

She says that sporadic fights by hired goons; especially in polling centres which are in her strongholds were calculated at scaring off her supporters; majority who were women from casting their votes.

Mango blames the Orange Democratic Movement Party (ODM) secretariat for failing to put in place elaborate security mechanisms for protection of female aspirants from open harassment.

"Even after female aspirants had been attacked in Meru, Nairobi and other parts prior to the nomination exercise, we continued asking for protection because we seemed to be ticket of electoral violence but the party only lent a deaf ear," she adds.

An infuriated Mango describes the nomination exercise as a total sham, a mockery of democracy, an insult and open violation of gender sensitivity to aspirants of a party of ODM's caliber.

She says that provocation and intimidation directed at her and her allied aspirants and agents was an act of incitement to violence to an outgoing female MP with strong youth structure.

"Because women are not known to be perpetrators of violence, I decided to take serious caution and restraint because there was going to be very bloody battles if I fought back," asserts Mango.

Mango became the first legislator from Western province to purchase a grader for her constituency through the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) kitty.

Mango says that despite the kitty funding other development projects, her committee managed to save from a three year allocations until it raised Kshs. 18 million for the purchase of the grader.

To this, she says, she was driven by the fact that most of the roads within the constituency were debilitated and made movement of both human and goods difficult.