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Kenya: Handle Polls With Care
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Business Daily (Nairobi)
EDITORIAL
7 May 2008
Posted to the web 7 May 2008
Politicians should handle the forthcoming by-elections with utmost care. While it is the right of political parties to field candidates, the campaigning should not be used as a forum to reopen the wounds inflicted on this nation after the December general election.
It would have been important if Parliament had legislated on how to go about by-elections within the framework of the coalition government. Sadly it didn't.
That this was never tackled has left us with little option, but to call for restraint on the part of politicians in the way they campaign.
The main political parties ODM, PNU, Kanu and ODM-K should urge their supporters to exercise restraint and more than ever before, check emotional utterances of their MPs.
Of importance is whether the ministers and assistant ministers of the coalition government should go to the campaign trail and this should be discussed at the Cabinet level and agreed. Politics is about competing ideas, but within our coalition.
Parliament has already ruled that we have no opposition in the House. We believe that for the sake of the coalition, the President, the Prime Minister and Cabinet ministers should keep off the campaign trail in support of particular candidates.
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Alternatively, they can ask all candidates to hold joint rallies and display unity of purpose. This way, the best candidate wins on behalf of the coalition and that way Cabinet ministers and political party leaders can ask the electorate to choose the best without wrecking the peace efforts.
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