Former Senate President, Ken Nnamani, has expressed optimism that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) will return to power in 2019.
He, however, said that the party which lost to the All Progressives Congress in March Presidential election must practice internal democracy.
Nnamani called for the abolition of delegate system to conduct primaries in the selection of candidates, as well as review of the PDP constitution to facilitate open congress, empowering all registered PDP members to vote and select their candidates.
Nnamani in a statement released in Abuja on Monday, urged members to stop the blame game over the party’s loss of last election.
He said: “Many of the people who are very pained that we lost the presidential election have needlessly been blaming ourselves. This blame game should not continue. We lost the election because we deserved to lose. We had run out of policy gas. We worked hard to lose the election.
“Now it is time for renewal and renewal requires strategic thinking and bold actions. Many years ago, I worked with some of my colleagues in the PDP and we foresaw this moment.
“We predicted that the PDP needed to keep faith with its cardinal principles and values to sustain its leadership of Nigerian politics. How I wished our other colleagues listened to us in those days. We would have averted the disaster of the 2015 electoral defeat.
“Some of those who contributed immensely to the PDP electoral defeat shouted us down and refused to hear our voice of wisdom. This is past now. There is no time for recrimination and self-adulation. It is time for clarity and effective action.
“It is time for genuine embrace of internal democracy. The new PDP should become the symbol of internal democracy. Our rebranding should first start with a real commitment to internal democracy.
“I suggest that before we go further on this journey let all those who desire to lead PDP in formal or informal positions of authority publicly declare a new code of conduct. The heart of this code of conduct will be an oath to always promote and protect internal democracy.
“Beyond the code, the new PDP must put in its constitution expulsion for any party official at all levels who deliberately subverts the process of internal democracy. Impunity must end now. Impunity does not end with mere words or declarations.
“It includes clear sanctions for violation of core tenets of party systems. It is common knowledge that we lost many states to the APC because we deliberately refused to conduct primaries that allow our party members to vote for the candidate of their choice.
“If we have been less reckless in management of party politics we would have gained at least four more states and perhaps won the presidential election. But we shot ourselves on the foot.”
“I think we should go the full hog and write into the new constitution that all primaries in the new PDP will be conducted in open congresses where all registered party members have equal votes. This is very radical.
“But we need radical responses to a terrible situation. Someone may say that even in United States, the symbol of democracy, primaries are sometimes based on delegates. But we can do better than the United States. We can deepen democracy by making primaries fully democratic.
“As a leader of the proscribed PDP Reform Forum, I took the clear position that we must be a party ruled by law not by men. I have long known that a rule-based system is superior to a discretion-based system. Godfatherism is a weak framework to build a system that can deliver its mandate.
“The weight of contradiction of reckless abandonment of our core values and rules is what has drowned the ship of PDP in the waters of Nigerian politics,” Nnamani concluded.
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