Nairobi Senator Mike Sonko (left) Starehe MP Maina Kamanda and Nairobi Women-Rep Rachel Shebesh at a past Jubilee Party event. Sonko and Kamanda are required to clear their names over 'fake' papers with the Jubilee Party before nominations. [PHOTO/nation.co.ke]
A section of Jubilee Party politicians are fighting to clear names after there arose complaints that they are using fake academic documents to seek the party's nominations.
Even though they dismissed allegations, Nairobi Senator Mike Sonko and Starehe MP Maina Kamanda will nevertheless have to defend themselves after complaints were filed at the party.
Mr Kamanda was accused at the Jubilee administration in a petition submitted by 10 voters on grounds that his secondary school certificate had a number of alterations.
But Kamanda has defended himself saying he did not present the said certificate and that similar claims had been made against him prior to the 2013 before the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) cleared him.
“This is a cut-and-paste complaint raised against me in 2013 and which investigations exonerated me. I have never submitted such a document and I think it is just a malicious accusations,” Kamanda said as quoted by Nation on Thursday.
On his part, Senator Sonko's degree was thrown in doubt after petitioners said he had earned the document although his high school grade did not qualify him for an undergraduate education.
However, Sonko has defended himself saying he attained the degree progressively and that it is entirely legit.
The party's secretary general Raphael Tuju has warned that although they are looking at every detail to avoid cases of witch-hunt among rivals, aspirants will be disqualified from the primaries if it is discovered that they have anomalies in their papers.
“For people who have written to us raising concerns about certain aspirants they feel their papers are not straight, we have written to those specific people about these allegations to get their responses. We know sometimes this could be sabotage but we will investigate the cases,” Tuju said.