UDA dismisses claims it stole Jubilee’s membership data

Deputy President William Ruto-led United Democratic Alliance (UDA) has dismissed the ruling Jubilee Party’s allegations that it stole its membership data.

Jubilee had claimed that UDA is using stolen data to hoodwink Kenyans that it is popular.

Jubilee approached Registrar of Political Parties Anne Nderitu to have UDA de-registered over for breaching the it’s databases and stealing up to two million of its membership data.

But in a statement released to newsrooms on Saturday February 5 by UDA’s Secretary General Veronica Maina, the Ruto-led outfit accuses Jubilee of insincerity and desperate attempts to curtail independence of “popular parties” noting that Jubilee cannot audit UDA’s membership database.

“The office of the Registrar of Political Parties is the custodian of all party membership registers. Consequently, and ordinarily, the Jubilee Party has no mandate or jurisdiction to audit or account for other political parties’ membership other than its own. The days of using ill-informed ‘Big Brother’ tactics to manipulate and control independent and popular parties ended with the promulgation of the progressive 2010 Constitution,” Ms Veronica elucidated.

UDA, believed be Ruto’s preferred political vehicle in his State House bid, despite being only 11 months old, claims to have 5.1 million registered members, according to its website.

Ms Maina attributed these figures to what she termed as vigorous recruitment of members across the 47 counties under the stewardship of its coordinators.

“Since its inception, UDA embarked on and is conducting a vigorous recruitment of members in all the 47 counties. These activities have been ongoing with emphasis on grassroots support in tandem with our ‘Bottom-Up’ economic model approach. Our county, constituency and ward coordinators together with our robust head office team have meticulously documented this process to guarantee accuracy,” she said adding that: “these are records availed to and always available for audit by the office of Registrar of Political Parties (ORPP),”

Jubilee deputy secretary general Joshua Kutuny disclosed that some of the officials who were feeding UDA with such data had been fired, noting that the ruling party has embarked on an audit to establish the exact number of members UDA took with the assistance of rogue officials.

“We are dealing with crooks. They did not build any data. What they are using was lifted from the Jubilee Centre. One of the reasons some of the coordinators were affected in the staff changes recently is because of feeding UDA with our data,” he said.

“The political infrastructure UDA is using is that of Jubilee. The Office of Registrar of Political Parties is aware of this and we are waiting for the response,” the Cherang’any MP added.

But Ms Maina said the ORPP had conducted random audits of membership and UDA is ready for another audit by Ms Nderitu’s office.

She said the ruling party should blame itself for the woes bedevilling it to the extent of envying UDA which has since eaten into the areas which used to be Jubilee’s strongholds.

“We understand the panic and attempts by the Jubilee Party to drag us into their party’s resuscitation efforts. For a party that embarked on a vicious and systemic purge of its own members, with high profile humiliation of parliamentary and party leadership, we are surprised that you now realise you do not have members. Your arrogance and cruelty was an effective membership mobilization for UDA,” Ms Maina said.

UDA adds that the failure by Jubilee to hold grassroot elections denied it an opportunity to grow, claiming that in the coming days, mass exodus is set to rock the ruling party.

“Jubilee, which has never held elections of their officials, stole their countless chances to be a party of their historic consequence and wasted them all on shameful displays of immaturity and shortlisted shows of might. The chicken has come home to roost,” Ms Maina said.

She also asked members of UDA to find out if they are still on the Jubilee membership database.

Following the war between Jubilee and UDA, Ms Nderitu told the Nation that when her office began rolling out digital reforms, Kenyans started raising concerns after finding themselves as members of parties without their knowledge.

“It is true there are concerns people finding themselves in the register of parties they do not have consented to. This is the reason why we are asking Kenyans to resign from those parties on e-citizen,” she said.

The registrar asked Kenyans who are disgruntled with their membership in parties they do not subscribe to their ideologies to visit e-citizen to resign from them noting that her office will soon issue USSD code to make the process easier.

“Soon, we are going to provide USSD code to make resignation very easy and joining any party they want easier. Kenyans have raised a number of concerns on a case by case basis and we are handling through the digital reforms we have rolled out to ensure that in future such a scenario does not occur,” she elucidated.

ORPP further added that: “We have also witnessed a high number [of resignations] on e-citizen platforms. We are processing 40,000 to 50,000 resignations per day unlike when we started where we could only process just 1000 cases.”

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