ÈKITI PDPs DEBACLE How serious are the group of 13 PDP governorship aspirants in Ekiti State? How sincere are they? With some of the personalities that we see among them, I will safe a third question whether they really understand the politics of the contest they are into? Some of them are veteran contestants, and like Senator Gbenga Aluko have even won elections in the past. So, one cannot dismiss everyone as lacking knowledge and experience of electoral contest. But theres an unfortunate attitude playing out here. Clearly, one can see self-centredness and greed, both from a disguised desperation of if its not me, it must not be someone else. As someone thats been very much involved in campaigns and electioneering, who has been on the ballot a number of times in the past, I can feel the pains of some of the aspirants who may have genuinely worked and gathered followership having to contend with pretenders, whose only reason for being in the race was merely the ability to pay the huge nomination fee. Such lazy aspirants know themselves among fellow contenders, just as the generality of PDP leaders and members in Ekiti know, in practical terms, who the real contenders are, away from the pretenders. The pretenders are usually more desperate than the real contenders. They usually have a defined mission, they want to use their money to buy into leadership reckoning, and negotiate for appointments. They know they cannot win the election for the party, and they were not in the race to win in the first place. Im sure that as you go to places together as aspirants you know among yourselves the real contenders and the pretenders. I can imagine the frustrations of the serious contenders when the pretenders, who are merely nothing but pollutants in the race, sit at negotiation table and insist on being the candidate. Even someone that you all knew was at the bottom of the ladder would insist on phony legitimacy of flying the partys flag. And why? Because hes paid the nomination fee. Now, lets come to addressing the arithmetic of primary and general electoral contests. All election are naturally between John and Joseph. That is to say the obvious reality is that if your campaigns have not bought for you a slot among two leading contenders in the race, Im sorry youre just a passenger among the pack. What is clear here is that Ayodele Fayose, no matter other non-political minuses about him, has shown to belong in one of either the John or Joseph for the PDP ticket in Ekiti, the second being among the pack is 13. Its also clear that if the 14 aspirants were to go for primary Fayose would have been able to get votes good enough to put him in the second position, definitely not worse than that, even if he would not win the ticket. So, anybody that is sincere to himself will not dismiss Fayose in the Ekiti PDP contest. But thats not the consideration here. The bulk of the aspirants except Fayose have preferred consensus to the primary election. So, is anything wrong with that? Nothing absolutely! Then another question arises here. Was anything wrong in Fayose insisting on primary? Nothing absolutely! Was the party wrong in directing that the primary held on Saturday, March 22, should go on? The party was right absolutely. The spirit of consensus in any democratic contest means TOTAL agreement among ALL contending forces, not simply a wish or choice of the majority, and once there is a disagreement from even one person in a million, consensus has failed. In effect, the only option open to the PDP leadership was to go for primary, which 13 of the aspirants except Fayose declared they were boycotting. Were the 13 aspirants right to have left the field for Fayose? They were WRONG absolutely. What should the G-13 have done in the circumstance? It is very simple. Since they had agreed to a consensus among themselves, it presupposes that everyone of them had agreed, if necessary, to make the sacrifice of abandoning his or her own ambition for the best candidate. If this spirit was sincerely followed I believe it should not have been difficult for the G-13 to raise one candidate that they all would present against Fayose at the primary. But they didnt do this, and I wasnt surprised at all that they couldnt agree on a group choice for the primary. Thats usually the difficulty in handling pretenders in situations like this. Im sure members of the G-13 would know among themselves who such pretenders are that have been holding them to ransom. It is therefore interesting to hear that 12 of the G-13 members have returned to the negotiation table and finally decided to pick one of them as their own consensus candidate. Let us not bother about the fact that even the consensus arrangement is already being disputed among themselves. Dayo Adeyeye has said they never picked Gbenga Aluko who was said to have been voted at a shadow election that they conducted among themselves. The issue to consider really îs, what effect will a consensus candidate picked by the G-12 or G-13 have after the national leadèrship of your party had admited the primary of March 22 as validly held and handed Fayose Certificate of Returns as the partys standardbearer for the June election? Maybe my knowledge of election management is not enough, I could not see how the new consensus can make the PDP leadership reverse itself and drop Fayose as the partys candidate. Really, what the G-13 are doing now is belated, it is prepôsterous. So, if the PDP aspirants were truly desirous of their pàrty winning the June election and inclined to believe that given the huge investments they have made individually, this is the time to abandon that will obviously lèad nowhere. Think às leàders. Talk together together as leaders. And work together as leaders. Anything outside of this is irredeemable electôral doom for your pàrty, and political doom for you individually and collectively.
Posted on: Sun, 30 Mar 2014 11:00:59 +0000
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