2011 Polls: Fears of implosion grips PDP over dirty compaigns
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) things are falling apart...
Dr Lame described the degeneration thus: “The unhealthy political debate in the PDP at the moment is something that has never happened in the party before. This is because issues have been buried under the carpet. It is now personality warfare and all sorts of unholy intrigues by the major actors at the centre in order to outplay each other.”
He remarked further that the party started derailing in 1999 after it won elections, but instead of improving, it kept on getting worse, especially every election year.
“The democratic credentials of the party is being eroded to the point that we may find it difficult to regain our unity to fight in future elections,” Dr Lame lamented.
The face-off is not just between President Jonathan and former Vice President Atiku. On Friday, December 3, 2010, Vice president Namadi Sambo re-opened the United Nigerian Textiles Limited (UNTL), Kaduna and after the event, he addressed newsmen. The interaction veered off from the main event to politics, where the vice president was asked about the northern consensus candidate. Categorically, Sambo went on the offensive, discrediting both Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the consensus candidate and the selection committee. According to him, the committee was self-imposed and lacked the mandate of the north. As vice president, Sambo reminded, he is the highest ranking northerner and an elder of the north and he was not privy to the decision to field a northern consensus candidate. With President Goodluck Jonathan, a doctorate degree holder and himself as an architect at the helm, Sambo said that they are educated enough to design policies that will make Nigerian one of the 20 biggest economies by the year 2020. Obliquely, this was interpreted as an attack on Atiku’s low educational qualification, compared to the president and his deputy.
Elsewhere, a pro-Atiku politician, Alhaji Namadi Musa, scoffed at Sambo’s claim, especially to move the nation forward.`` In spite of their education, there is no indication that the president and his deputy can achieve this tall order, given the state of power in the country, insecurity to lives and property in the Niger Delta and Borno state and the lack of direction by the government. Our foreign reserves keep dwindling everyday, the excess crude oil account is varnishing fast and recently, the government has opened our borders to all kinds of goods to be imported, ranging from textile materials to tooth pick! This policy does say a lot about the correlation between being a doctorate degree holder and a good leader.”
Constitutional breaches and array of undemocratic approaches to doing things by the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) could be responsible for the unending conflicts in the party. Alhaji Isyaku Ibrahim, a founding member of the PDP hinged the infighting, smear campaigns and the entire diatribe in the party on desperation to legitimize illegitimacy by the key political actors in the build up to the presidential primaries.
Alhaji Ibrahim said, “It is necessary to establish the source of trouble in the PDP. The two persons fighting dirty on the pages of news papers, Atiku and Jonathan, are products of illegality. Jonathan has breached the principle of zoning to pursue his ambition and Atiku is hanging on an illegal and undemocratic arrangement called consensus, to prosecute his ambition to be president. That is why we have tension in the party now. Even the party’s chairman, Nwodo has no legitimacy to conduct primaries until his appointment by Jonathan is ratified at a party convention. I don’t want to say anything more on the matter.”
The dangerous media campaigns
The media is inundated with political campaigns that are no longer issue-based but deliberate attacks on personality, all in a desperate bid to create public disaffection for one another. Headlines like “what does Atiku want? Nigerians is it fair for only four persons to...?” “Support Nigerian Consensus aspirant,” which is Jonathan, and many more others coming from Jonathan’s campaign groups and similar frontal attacks on Jonathan from Atiku’s camp like, “Jonathan operates voodoo economy, ideas build nations and not Luck,” “A man who cannot honour agreement should not be trusted;” “we want “competence and not youthfulness,” and a lot more.
The smear campaigns have continued to run on pages of newspapers, on the tubes and the airwaves as if the primary is not an in-house thing.
Besides the dirty campaigns, many government officials, including governors are practically arm-twisted in this process. Reports have it that most state governors now queue behind Jonathan for fear of the unknown. It was reported recently that in Rivers State, two commissioners in the Atiku Campaign organization were forced to resign by the state governor, Rotimi Amaechi. It was also learnt that some governors are afraid of identifying openly with Atiku for fear of being branded renegades, particularly those nursing second term ambitions. This fear is aggravated by the return of Mr Ibrahim Lamorde, an Assistant Commissioner of Police, as Director of Operations at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). It is speculated that Lamorde, who was on a team that investigated and put some governors on the defence during the 2007 polls, may have been invited to carry-out the same objective for President Jonathan.
Fears over delegates
There is panic among the potential delegates following the passage of the new Electoral bill by the House of Representatives. Some of the clauses have the capacity to reduce the number of delegates for the presidential primaries.
The Atiku Abubakar Campaign Organization, at the weekend, expressed reservations that the new bill has the potentials to reduce, rather than expand, the democratic space in the country.
According to the statement, “the clause reducing the number of delegates by almost one-third, reduces the democratic space rather than expand it.
It said, “the decision to remove members of state assemblies, party chairmen and local council chairmen from the list of delegates for the election of presidential candidates for the political parties, for instance, not only reduces the democratic space, it also poses the threat of isolating the parties from the grassroots where their strengths should lie.
“The party chairmen in local councils, council chairmen and members of state assemblies are the faces of the parties at the grassroots.
“These are the point’s men of the party at the grassroots. They provide the liaison between the party at the federal, state and local council levels. Their removal from the delegates’ list therefore poses a threat to the grassroots base for the political parties.”
The Campaign Organization also queried the clause in the bill which stipulated the hosting of the party’s presidential primaries in Abuja, rather than in the states, where they were designed in the previous bill.
“The logic behind holding presidential primaries is to ensure that presidential candidates visit the states and become familiar with the problems and aspirations of Nigerians across the country. The hosting of presidential primaries in Abuja poses the danger of producing presidents who are not familiar with the experiences of Nigerians in the states.
“If the presidential candidates truly want to serve Nigerians, they should not only campaign in the states, they should test their acceptability in the states as well.”
The Campaign Organization called on the Senate to review the bill when it deliberates it to ensure that the electoral bill expands the democratic space rather than constrict it.
“Passing the bill as it is presently constituted, poses grave dangers to our democracy.”
Reacting to the allegations, the chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Rules and Business, Hon. Ita Enang, told Sunday Trust that the job of the National Assembly is to make laws for the governing of the country, hence it was out of place for any party to accuse the lawmakers of conspiracy on matters within its purview.
He insisted that anyone who felt hurt by any law made by the National Assembly has the option of going to court to challenge that particular law.
The lawmaker explained that the bill on the Electoral Act before the National Assembly was a mere proposal which has just passed through a second reading, hence it is premature for the public to say the National Assembly has done anything to generate tension in the polity.
“The bill has not been passed yet. In fact, it is not debated yet because it is on Tuesday that the bill will pass through a third reading. When the bill passes through a third reading, it will be committed to the appropriate committee to continue their work on the bill and report to the House for debate and adoption and later go to the senate for concurrence before it can be forwarded for the president’s assent. Let me say that a bill before the House from the beginning to the end is still a proposal”
He added that before a bill is passed, the public will be involved to ventilate their opinion on the proposal, adding that the public have the right to adopt or reject it.
The fears expressed by three governors
Governors Sule Lamido of Jigawa State, Magatakarda Wamakko of Sokoto State and Murtala Nyako of Adamawa State have roundly expressed fears that the political bickering in the PDP over the presidential ticket, which gets pronounced by the passing day, has the capacity to leave the party in tatters after the parimaries must have been won and lost.
In an earlier interview with Sunday Trust recently, Governor Lamido said, “G3 is simply a meeting of PDP friends and colleagues who, as governors, are very much interested in the stability, cohesion and capacity of the party to win elections in the country. And so, it is a normal thing for us to meet as governors. Only the PDP has the capacity to secure Nigeria for all. Therefore, as governors under one umbrella, it is normal for us to meet and discuss issues of mutual interest.” The governors believe that winning the ticket by either Jonathan or Atiku may not be a tug of war, but what happens afterwards?
They wondered whether Atiku will admit defeat at the end of the day and work with Jonathan, going by the current face-off between the two principal contenders for the party’s presidential ticket. The fear is that if Atiku wins the party’s primaries, President Jonathan will not accept defeat and work with Atiku to win the presidential poll in 2011, and vice versa. To them, there is need for some persons to stand in the gap to fashion out a soft landing for the party, in the aftermath of primary.
The governors believe that if nothing is done urgently to tame the on-going squabble in the party over the presidential ticket, there could be an eventual mass exodus from the party to other evolving opposition parties.
IBB’s threat letter to the PDP
The threat by former military president, retired General Ibrahim Babangida, to “reconsider” his membership of the PDP over zoning, has put the ruling party on edge, even though attempts were made to downplay the incident.
General Babangida, in a letter entitled “Peoples Democratic Party and the Challenges of the Judgement of the High Cout of the Federal Capital Territory in Suit No. FCT/HC/CV/2425/2010 – Sani Aminu Dutsiman V. Peoples Democratic Party – Re-rotation and Zoning of Party and Public Elective Officers,” asked the party to respect a recent court ruling upholding the principle of party and elective positions as enshrined in the PDP constitution.
He warned that he and some other aggrieved members will reconsider their continued membership of the party if their grievances are not addressed.
“As we all know, it is the duty of the judiciary to say what the law is. The judiciary has made its pronouncement. Our duty is to comply. That is the appeal which I now make to you-to comply with the provisions of the constitution of the party as interpreted by a court of competent jurisdiction… as a founding member of the party and in fact, as one of its principal officers, at the time and as its present chairman, no one is in a better position than yourself to understand and to execute the party’s constitution,” the letter said.
The threat letter from Babangida has in a way, given credence to the fears being expressed by the three governors who have of recent, engaged in some political activities that are not too clear to the public.
How Atiku is running his campaign
The Director of Media and Publicity of the Atiku Campaign Organization, Malam Garba Shehu, admitted that his organization did not restrict itself to ‘clean campaign, explaining, however’, that it was a reaction to attacks from their opponent.
His words, “I won’t say we have not done negative campaigns. We have done negative campaigns in reaction to the mud that has been thrown at us. Otherwise, we believe we can win well by dwelling on issues of the day, but the president keeps dishing mud every day because he has lost out on the case for issue-based campaign”
But when asked if the PDP can survive the presidential primary between Atiku and Jonathan in view of the bitter campaigns, he said, “PDP will still be PDP. PDP will be PDP. If Atiku wins the primary election, he would go along with other members of the party for the general elections and win. If he loses the primaries, PDP would remain PDP.
“But there is this weak link that the we are managing and it is that the president of the country has no business being in the election. He is working against the spirit of an arrangement he had been a part of from the beginning. He needs to get out for temperature in the party to cool down.
Many exist who argue that dwelling on zoning shows you need some other ideas. They feel that zoning has been over flogged. Such people merely want to wish zoning away, but you can’t wish it away. Zoning is a basic principle that has assured peace since 1999. You can’t begin to deny it now just because it is convenient for you to do so.
Commenting on what happens if Jonathan does not ‘get out’ but goes ahead instead to get the PDP ticket, he said “PDP would still be PDP. But it would be a tragedy. We are not envisaging a situation in which Goodluck Jonathan will pick the PDP ticket. We are going to beat him at the primaries and go ahead to win the general elections.
‘Political campaigns should not put Nigeria at risk’
Professor Rufai Ahmed Alkali, the PDP National Publicity Secretary, told Sunday Trust that the party iw making frantic efforts to redirect the campaign strategies of its presidential aspirants in order not to put the country and the party at risk.
He said, “you see we have gone into the election season. With the release of the time- table by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), all the political parties around the country are also working to produce their own time-tables and guidelines for the election. Already, many people have come out to stand for elections for various offices throughout the country. So, it is very difficult to say there is no excitement in the land. There are a lot of excitements or you can say vibrancy. Politics has picked up. But in some areas, we do have some people who are over doing it.
According to him, “there is a lot of anxiety, excitement and even tension, if you like. But all the same, we have been warning politicians. We have been warning that everybody should operate by the book. The national chairman of the party, Dr Okwesilieze Nwodo, has stated this repeatedly and the National Working Committee (NWC), has been very strong on that matter, that people should steer clear from the old ways of doing things.”
On whether the campaigns of the two major presidential aspirants suggest that they may not work for each other after the primary elections, Alkali said, “no, I don’t think we have reached that point. But, I know that the President and the former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, are seasoned politicians. They are our leaders. Their supporters are also working hand-in-hand to ensure that whatever we do, we do it correctly. So far, we are not worried. We are only worried about the press.”
Last Thursday, the Kaduna state chapter of the Jonathan/Sambo Campaign Organisation, addressed a press conference condemning Namadi Musa for attacking the vice president. The organisation advised that campaigns should be issues-based and not an exercise in name calling. Similarly, Alhaji Suleiman Lawal, the deputy campaign coordinator of the North-West zone, described the politics of mudslinging as unfortunate, but is expected in the countdown to the elections. According to him, it is normal for this to arise during election seasons but this time around, the dirty campaigns have gone up a notch higher than normal.
Comments
Post a Comment