Our presidential candidate must be voted by all party members – PDP

 The Peoples  Democratic Party (PDP) said it was
planning to apply option A4 in electing its
candidates for all coming elections, including
presidential candidate for 2019 general polls.
It said that if approved by the membership of the
party, the application of the method may begin with
upcoming congresses of the party.
National Publicity Secretary of party, Chief Olisa
Metuh, disclosed this when he received the former
chairman of the National Patriotic Party (NPP) of
Ghana, Mr Peter Manu, at the party’s national
secretariat on Friday in Abuja.
Metuh said that the decision was part of the
reforms to reposition the PDP for the 2019 general
elections.
He said that the system would not be restricted to
presidential election as it would be applicable to
others elective positions such as governorship,
senatorial, house of representatives and down to
the wards.
He explained that with the proposed system, party
members would have to queue behind the
candidates of their choice.
``We are going to change our system to be that
our presidential candidate would be voted for by all
party members in the country. It would be at the
ward level.
``We will no longer elect presidential candidate at
the national convention. It will now be for every
party member to vote for whoever would be our
presidential candidate.
``Whoever would vie for our presidential ticket
would have to tour the entire country before he can
be elected.
``This is part of the reform we are coming up with.
``Basically, this would be the last convention
where we would have people to be elected at the
national convention. We are taking the party back to
the Nigerian people,’’ Metuh said.
He said that the proposed reform was part of Sen.
Ike Ekweremadu’s committee’s recommendations
on how to reform and reposition PDP.
He added that the proposed amendments had been
sent to the state chapters for their inputs in line
with ``our desire to have peoples opinion’’.
``After their inputs, the recommendation would be
sent to the National Executive Committee (NEC) for
approval.
Earlier, Manu had said that the process of electing
presidential candidate was one of the reforms his
party adopted after it lost election to opposition
party in Ghana in 2018.
``When we lost election, there was need to review
and make amends and these amends led to some
critical reforms in the party structure and
organisation.
``We realised for example, that the modus
operandi of how our presidential candidate was
elected had a hand in why we lost the general
election.
``There were as many as 17 presidential
candidates in our 2008 contest when our incumbent
president, John Kufor, was exiting and all the 17
presidential candidate were running for votes from
a mere 3,500 delegates.
``So, it was money, money, money until the day of
congress,’’ he said.
Manu said that NPP realised that the then
opposition party, which was now in government,
used that against his party ``and cast spell on us
as being corrupt, that we were throwing money at
the people’’.
`` So, the first thing I did as the national chairman
of the party was to expand the delegates system to
cover the nooks and cranny of the party structure.
`` So, the party structure was reorganized to start
from the polling unit level where a five-member
executive was elected.’’