Who will be the next mayor of Nairobi?

City businessman Karanja Kabage was being suggested as a possible PNU candidate for Nairobi's mayor's seat.

Kabage, who failed to win the Molo parliamentary seat was hoping to be nominated as councillor to run against an ODM candidate. ODM leaders suggested business-woman nomination of Esther Passaris who would then run for the Mayor's seat.

Kabage said he would consider to run for city mayor if nominated. "But I have not been nominated as councillor so thinking of being mayor is unimaginable at this time," he said.

The possibility of a nominated taking over the mantle of the city has received opposition from elected councillors, majority of whom are from the ODM party.

They would rather choose a mayoral candidate from those elected. The ODM councillors have expressed a preference for Baba Dogo councillor Geoffrey Majiwa to run for mayor.

The jockeying for position is taking place even though the Electoral Commission of Kenya is yet to announce and gazette the names of the people elected during the last month's General Election.

Three weeks down the line, city residents are still in the dark as to who their civic leaders are. It is also unclear whether the civic election would be repeated in Kamukunji constituency where the ECK nullified the results due to disruption of the tallying exercise by agents of the more than 20 parliamentary candidates who vied for the seat.

Yesterday, ECK officials said they were still harmonising the list of elected councillors. Commissioner Jack Tumwa declined to explain what was causing the delay.

Provisional results indicated that the seats were shared largely among the two leading political parties - ODM (36) while PNU and its affiliate shared the remaining 22. The city has 58 civic wards with 20 seats preserved for nominated members.

ODM will have 12 nomination slots while PNU shall have eight.



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