All does not seem well with the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in Cross River state as the build up to next year’s polls gathers momentum, www.calitown.com can authoritatively reveal. First, sources within the party informed of a disagreement last week between members of the party’s executive which almost degenerated into negative contact in the party secretariat. This particular incident is said to be connected to the announcement by the party hierarchy, banning political campaigns within the state, for the time being. A faction of the Exco is said to have the feeling that the party chairman has been unable to be his own man, taking instructions “from a few shadowy persons with very deep parochial interests”, as one source put it. “These are the same people whose actions have been responsible for the mountain of internally created problems that continue to make our party unable to realise her true potentials”, he continues.
Perhaps too, Sunday’s political lunch at the Peregrino Hall, Calabar, with around 200 invitees, is “showing that our party is not in sync with the stark realities on the ground. How can we think that it is the exclusive right of those in attendance at the lunch to determine who becomes the next governor of this state, or that this contraption called the PDP ‘family’, is the absolute way to go, politically. I think that until the criteria for biological membership of this ‘family’ is made public, delusional members of the ‘family’ will continue to falter at personal costs”, the source concluded.
At the lunch, www.calitown was informed that those interested in running for governor of CRS were given the nod to go ahead and consult, with emphasis on internal structure consultations. For one member of the party who volunteered information, “this internal structure thing is still the problem with the party; it threatens to have a choke hold on what we can do and how we should do it even if we are not convinced. We are not in a democracy if our choices are informed more by a decision to please conventions that are not people centred”.
As it stands, we have it on good authority that those who seek to tie down the entire party structure may be in for a surprise as serious political alignments and re-alignments will play out in the coming days.
The Bishop of Ogoja Diocese has put paid to this specultion. In his recent Lenten Message, he banned all his Priests from participating in partisan politics. Except the priest wnts to isobey the Chuch!