NASA is muling over plans to reintroduce the abandoned joint candidates strategy in areas where its survival is threatened.
On Wednesday, presidential candidate Raila Odinga hosted his campaign regional coordinators from across the country and told them of plans to strike consensus in areas where internal competition can give rivals undue advantage.
Raila said the NASA affiliate parties will agree in the spirit of give-and-take to withdraw some ‘weak’ candidates to boost the chances of partner parties winning the seat.
The opposition is worried it could lose seats to rivals when they fragment their vote bloc among the five constituent parties.
The fear is compounded by the emergence of independent candidates who bolted out of the parties after claiming
being rigged out in the primaries.
Raila told the regional coordinators that NASA needs the majority of lawmakers in both Houses of Parliament to help in pushing its legislative agenda if they form the next government.
“In some areas we have NASA parties competing [against] each other. You are aware of friendly fire? Friendly fire also kills,” Raila told the campaign coordinators.
“As NASA parties we want them [candidates] to agree so and so is stronger here, then the other withdraws its candidate. That is what we are going to do towards [the] election,” he added.
The meeting was also attended by foreigners introduced by Raila as NASA friends from Scotland, USA and Ghana.
ANC secretary general Godfrey Osotsi supported the move, saying it should be fasttracked to ensure NASA dominates in the two Houses.
“It is something that ANC will support. It should be done urgently before gazettement and in consultation with the parties and the individual candidates,” Osotsi told the Star on the phone.
Wiper also confirmed that there are intense talks in that direction and soon the alliance will announce areas where they will rally behind one candidate.
“There is an effort within [the] coalition with regard to that [joint candidate]. I can confirm there is conversation among the parties,”Wiper executive director Jared Siso said.
The opposition’s plans to hold joint nominations in key areas was abandoned last minute when the parties failed to agree on which specific seats should be jointly contested.
NASA bigwigs also failed to convince their respective candidates to buy into the joint nominations idea.