Female aspirants seek support to boost campaigns

Female aspirants have called for support from willing partners to successfully run for elective seats in the August General Election.

During a meeting at the Canadian High Commissioner’s residence in Nairobi on Wednesday, the aspirants singled out financial and non-financial resources as pivotal boosters to running effective campaigns before and after nominations.

The meeting, jointly convened by the UN Women and the Canadian High Commission, brought together female aspirants from Nairobi, Kiambu, Kakamega, and Baringo counties; diplomats; civil society representatives; and development partners.

“We lack financial support from political parties. Sometimes they support male candidates more,” said Loise Kim, presented it as a challenge identified by fellow aspirants from the break-out sessions.

Planning

Ms Kim is one of the nine women aspiring for the Kiambu woman representative seat.

“We really need a lot of support, especially before primaries, [in the form] of merchandise, money for planning and strategising,” she added.

But Public Service and Gender Principal Secretary Collette Suda urged women to go into elective politics well prepared financially.

“You need to be very conscious of the fact that this is a very expensive affair…it costs a lot of money to campaign,” Prof Suda said.

“A lot of people don’t take it kindly when you start raising funds [through] harambee to run for a political office.”

UN Women Kenya country representative Anna Mutavati said they are already supporting women by engaging voters through radio and television stations.

She said they are educating voters on the role and value of women in leadership. This is one way of campaigning for women, she said.

“We are in conversations with the police to ensure the security of women aspirants and candidates so that the boda bodas don’t get hired to come and disrupt your political gatherings,” Ms Mutavati said.

She also indicated that the UN agency is engaging with the political parties to ensure they adhere to the two-third gender principle as directed by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission.

The United Nations resident coordinator in Kenya, Stephen Jackson, noted that “achieving gender equality will take men’s leadership supporting women leaders”.

Equality and empowerment

He said women’s equality and empowerment is not just one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) but the foundation of all the other SDGs.

“You can’t get to any of the SDGs without passing through SDG five. It is simply impossible,” he said.

He said UN Women jointly with the United Nations Development Programme would soon launch a high-tech platform for tracking, monitoring and combating online abuse and harassment of women aspirants and candidates as well as women voters online.

Canada’s acting High Commissioner David da Silva emphasised the need to support women to get into political leadership.

He said it is important to put women and girls at the heart of every development process and consider the impact of every policy on them.

“We need to figure out how to make women aspirants more resilient. For those in positions of influence (find means to) to reduce violence and barriers, and provide better access to funding for the women aspirants,” he said.

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