The National Super Alliance (NASA) has made a major move to avert the imminent break-up of its four constituent political parties.
This comes amid a clash by affiliate parties ODM and Wiper over joint nominations — with the Musyoka-led party threatening to ditch NASA over the issue.
The opposition coalition has unveiled an elaborate nominations plan mapping the country into four broad zones to eliminate friction among affiliates parties and win a majority of seats.
According to the nomination rules drafted by a team led by University of Nairobi don Dr Adams Oloo, the first zone involves NASA strongholds where one of four affiliates — ODM, Wiper, ANC and Ford Kenya — is dominant.
These could be Nyanza or Ukambani where ODM and Wiper, respectively, command enormous followings.
In this case, they would hold their own primaries.
The second category involves opposition strongholds where two or more of the four constituents command popularity.
An example is Western where Raila Odinga's ODM, Musalia Mudavadi's ANC and Moses Wetangu'la's Ford-Kenya enjoy good support.
In instances where Jubilee has no chance, each party would hold primaries and their candidates would face off on August 8.
The third zone is for battlegrounds where only one NASA party is dominant — an example being in Maasailand where ODM enjoys better support compared to the other NASA parties.
Here, only the dominant party will conduct nominations and the successful candidate will face JP.
The fourth and final category is for battleground regions in which two or more affiliates are popular. An example could be Nairobi and Northeastern.
In this scenario, NASA parties will conduct joint primaries and the eventual winner will be the opposition flagbearer.
However, conspicuously missing from Oloo's formula are the names of the specific areas that will follow in the four categories.
