Bayelsa and party primaries

Over the last couple of weeks, the media has been awash with speculations and analy­ sis over who will secure the gubernatorial ticket for the PDP in preparation for next years election. Two questions have been posed. Will President Goodluck Jonathan to obtain the PDP ticket? If he does not, which of the other candidates is closest to the President between Ben Murray Bruce, President of Silverbird, Timi Alaibe, former Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission and Henry Dickson of the House of Representatives? Mean­ while, they have all deployed their media teams to prove to the world that they are close confidants of the President

In preparation for the primaries, the PDP s nomination bureaucracy has become more elaborate. In addition to the screening panel, an appeals committee has been established. As this is the most complicated nomination in the party’s history, the National Working Committee of the party is treating the clearance of aspirants in batches. South-South Governors and their other colleagues are meeting with the President and organizing con­ claves to ensure that their col­ league is not screened out.

Suddenly, numerous petitions alleging corruption by Governor Sylva are emerging. Sitting chair persons of local governments have just discovered that their boss has been stealing their allocations from the joint state-local government account. Civil servants have become emboldened and are sending allegations to the EFFC about the Governor’s corrupt activities.

Securing a nomination that is usually a done deal for an incumbent governor has now become a herculean task. In the present context, the types of games played during the presidency of Olusegun are clearly chances of securing the party nomination now appear to be purely a function of the whims and caprices of the president. Given that the president is an indigene of Bayelsa State, should he get involved in the political wrangling of his home base? Should he not maintain the elevated status he already has as the President of all Nigerians?

The worst aspect in all these is that no one is posing the question of what do PDP party members in Bayelsa State want and who will they support. And yet, the 2010 Electoral Act as amended is categorical that the principle guiding party nomination is support by party members, not party leaders. The challenge is to make this principle and law the basis of political action. It is easier said than done. It was clear from the 2011 general elections that political parties constitute the weakest link in Nigeria’s electoral democracy. They are virtually all characterised by lack of internal democracy, absence of prominence for issue-based campaigns and reliance on connections, money and violence to achieve their major goal of capturing power either within their parties or in the wider political arena.

In conformity with the Act, INEC tried to monitor polit­ ical parties in 2011 to ensure that the law was enforced. They were checkmated by a barrage of litigations and political harassment. At the end of the day, INEC was not able to play its role of monitoring political parties and imposing necessary sanctions during the 2011 elections adequately. The articles of Section 87 of the Act relating to the con­ duct of party primaries were completely ignored and party bosses not members took final decisions of who got the party ticket to contest.

After the elections, INEC had started to bark by de-reg- istering parties that did not win seats. It has also announced that it is doing this in batches. I believe that the inability of many small parties to win any seat at both national and state level and the initiation of party de-registration by INEC pose problem to the right to association guaranteed by the Constitution and contradicts the Supreme Court decision on conditions that compel INEC to register parties that meet the constitutional provisions. Rather than focus its attention on de-registration, INEC should focus on two things.

Effective Monitoring of political party primaries/candidates selection processes for the purpose of enforcing provisions in the law that empowers INEC to monitor and sanction political parties; development of conditions or provisions that entitles political parties to be on the ballot. The problem in elections is not that there are too many parties but that there are too many candidates on the ballot. INEC should institute mechanisms that will allow only serious candidates to get on the ballot. In 2011, many presidential candidates did not get up to 2,000 votes nationwide. This means many candidates who wanted to be President did not have the capacity to get their own villages to vote for them.

If you have provisions that stipulates for example that prospective candidates must show letters of support from legislators or from 10,000 citizens, frivolous candidates will be weeded out. Meanwhile, INEC should see itself as sufficiently empowered to monitor party primaries and processes for selecting candidates. INEC should develop clear guidelines conditionalities for political parties to be on the ballot in presidential and governorship elections well ahead of elections to enable discussions and consensus between INEC and the political parties and settle law suits should they arise. We must make a serious attempt in this country to move party nomination processes away from the idea that it’s the affair of party bosses, godfathers, owners and barons. The idea that political parties are popular organisations belonging to its members must be re-invented. During the First Republic, political parties took their members seriously because members meet weekly at the neighbourhood level to discuss party affairs and collect a few shillings to fund party activities. No political party today bothers to collect membership dues. They depend on barons and godfathers.Naturally, these people begin to believe that they own the parties.

As we prepare for the next round of elections, INEC must commit itself to enforcing the law which says parties belong to members and people who contest elections can only do so if they have been chosen by members not bosses. This is a process that is very important for party development. In the 2011 elections for example, the Congress for Democratic Chance (CPC) grossly underperformed because many supporters believed candidates for gubernatorial and legislatives seats were not popular choices of the masses but had been imposed by party bosses. In their anger, many CPC supporters voted against their party as a sign of protest. It is therefore in the interest of parties them­ selves to respect the choices made by their members rather than their godfathers