Dimapur, June 30 (EMN): Naga People’s Front (NPF) has ridiculed the State Congress party of manifesting ignorance on the Indian parliamentary norms and procedure by calling the present chief minister as ‘unmandated’ when the 60- member house has endorsed his leadership.
NPF party was reacting to NPCC statement in which the latter had accused the chief minister and NPF president, Dr. Shurhozelie, of resorting to nepotism by appointing his son Khriehu Liezietsu as advisor of Music Task Force (MTF) with cabinet status.
NPF Media and Press Bureau today reminded NPCC on the constitutional provision in which an unelected member can head the House/ Parliament provided he/ she gets elected within a period of six months. It cited instances wherein Hokishe Sema was sworn-in replacing SC Jamir in 1987, and in 1990 when Vamuzo was sworn-in when they both were not being members of the Assembly. It ridiculed the Congress party of ‘conveniently’ forgetting the cases of Congress Prime Ministers PV Narasimha Rao (1991) and Dr. Manmohan Singh (2004), who were not members of either Lok Sabha or Rajya Sabha at the time they were sworn in.
On the appointment of Khriehu Liezietsu as advisor, NPF said by looking into the case from the jaundiced eyes of the Congress it would appear as an act of ‘nepotism in the State to greater heights’ surpassed only by the mother-son duo of its high command surrounded by coterie grovelling and falling over each other in their mad rush to please the mother-son duo.
It said the appointment of Khriehu as advisor with cabinet status was due to the demand of the party functionaries who felt that the sacrifice of vacating his seat in the larger interest of the NPF-led DAN government should not go unappreciated. It added that the appointment was made accordingly on June 14 during its CEC meeting for making the supreme political sacrifice.
“But this political, co-terminus appointment should not be equated in any way with exempting one’s son-in-law, a wheeler-dealer in real estates, from security frisking in all the Airports in the country when the UPA was in power at the Centre,” the statement said.
NPF has also accused the Congress of tending to developed a nasty allergy to political parties flush with allies, for instance, the Naga People’s Front, which has no shortage of politically like-minded parties determined to edge out the Congress party from the political scene in the region and country.
To refresh the memory of the Congress party, it said after the dark era of Emergency imposed by the Congress party, the forerunner of the NPF realised the danger posed by the INC and formed alliance with non-Congress national parties in 1977. With the emergence of BJP to take on the might of the Indian National Congress, it said the NPF realised that the BJP is its natural ally.
“It is said that human memory is short, but it is not as short as to forget how the Congress party did not want to solve the Naga problem and kept it pending all those years that it was in power here in the State and at the Centre,” the statement added. NPF has made this reference when in the late 1990s the party symbol was freeze in the aftermath of the Naga people’s call for solution and not election, which was heeded to by the NPF and other political parties in the State except the Congress party.
It also recalled how the present NPCC present was sacked unceremoniously from the Congress ministry in 2002 as well as from DAN- I.
With elections just round the corner, it stated that the Congress party is making noises just for the sake of being heard. IT added that the Congress party is yet to go through an acid test of achieving victory in electoral battle under the leadership of K Therie.
