- ‘We’ll tackle old habits’
Stakeholders of the Peoples Democratic Party have blamed the anointing and imposition of candidates in the run-up to elections for the inability of the opposition party to record victory at the polls.
They argued that crises that usually arose after influencing the pre-election selection of candidates had always marred the chances of the party and prevented it from winning elective offices during general elections across the country.
Some of the stakeholders, who met at the weekend at the PDP secretariat in Owerri, told our correspondent that the leaders of the party needed to jettison the old habit of pre-election selection.
“If the leaders bring out people’s choices for an election, every member will fight to ensure that such candidate wins the election, but when the leaders decide to compromise, those affected will defect or remain passive during the election proper,” one of them, who preferred not to be named, said.
He argued that pre-election selection had been the bane of PDP, resulting in the internal crises that had always arisen from selection of candidates through party primaries.
Some others, who also pleaded not to have their names mentioned, maintained that no political party in the country had suffered from internal crises as much as the PDP.
According to them, such crises arose out of indiscriminate imposition of candidates by powerful members of the party and other bigwigs, substitution of candidates, who have won the primary election with others who did not, and disrespecting internal rules and regulations, which usually resulted in division and defection of members to other parties.
They further said that enduring crises in the party also contributed to the defeat of its 16 years incumbency in the 2015 general elections.
They, therefore, called on the party leadership, both at the national and state levels, to find solutions to these problems with a view to checking such malpractices before the primary elections in preparations for the general elections in 2019.
They warned that past elections were marred by resultant chaos and internal crises.
The stakeholders discovered that lack of synergy between the party’s laid down rules, legal framework and institutional designs, with actual practices, borne out of the pursuance of personal interests, was one of the major factors that resulted in protracted intra-party conflicts within the PDP.
Reacting to the stakeholders’ observations, the Imo State PDP Chairman, Charles Ezekwem, said that his administration would not condone the old habit of pre-selection, writing of lists or imposition of any sort of candidate.
“These vices orchestrated the problems we had in the years past. We cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the past, unless we have not learnt any lessons from such misadventure,” he noted.
The party chairman vowed to entrench laudable legacies, which posterity would eternally applaud.