Our Correspondent
Kohima, Sep. 21 (EMN): Dr. Shürhozelie Liezietsu-led Naga People’s Front (NPF) Central office has today outrightly dismissed the general convention organised by its rival NPF group led by Lok Sabha MP Neiphiu Rio and the claims made by the latter as unconstitutional and invalid.
On the reports that Rio’s party claimed of having around 42,000 supporters attending the general convention and 32,871 party workers endorsed for removal of Liezietsu as party president, NPF secretary general and Rajya Sabha MP KG Kenye told reporters today that what matters is not a matter of attendance.
“When it is to do with a claim, a dispute or a legal battle then technicalities are involved…. How many of these 32,000 odd attendees will be having their names registered as active members in the register that is submitted to the ECI? Or in the master register that we have here? It makes no sense. Just simple majority or a large number does not make something right. There are other grounds where we will have to see what is valid and bonafide and what is not,” Kenye said. He also ridiculed Rio’s party of having quoted a telephone directory printed by the party as the document supporting their claim of CEC members.
When asked if the party could produce white paper on the threat made by Liezietsu about present chief minister TR Zeliang and Rio siphoning off over Rs.2000 crore public fund, Kenye said Liezietsu will not just make such a claim unless he had some documentary proof. But he refused to comment further on the matter.
Meanwhile, categorically stating that the allegations made by the rival group were unfounded, baseless and wrong accusations, Kenye clarified the constitutional provisions that backed his contention. On the allegation that there was no provision for impeachment of the party president in the party constitution, Kenye stated that the provisions for the disciplinary action committee (DAC) under Article XIV directly apply to all the party functionaries including the president himself.
“The provisions in the constitution clearly mention that any functionary/party worker who goes against the principles and the programs of the party is liable to fall under the scanner of the anti-party disciplinary rules. That covers everything and there is no exception. No specific mention can be made for each position of a functionary but it covers the entire organisation starting with the president himself right down to an active or primary member, cutting across the boundary levels of the three states,” Kenye said. To drive home his point, he cited the instance where the party had to impeach its own president in October 2002 due to similar events where some partymen did not agree to the party’s majority decision to change the nomenclature from Naga People’ Council to Nagaland People’s Front.
On what he termed ‘one outstanding accusation’ against the party president Liezietsu having exercised extra constitutional powers, Kenye felt that there was confusion that the president has manipulated the election board, which comes under Article IV point No.5. He clarified that the president’s powers and functions were clearly mentioned in Article V of the party constitution within 11 points. He stated that none of the points were changed in the latest (eighth) amendment of the constitution (2016) except for the addition of one point, which empowers the president to nominate the election board for state units and for divisional, area, village/town and ward units. Kenye said the rival group seemed to be confused with the last point of being involved with the central election board, which he pointed out, remains as it was and that it fell under a different article and was never touched from the first constitution upto the eighth amendment. The additional power pertains to all the subordinate offices below the central office, he added.
On the charge levelled at the central office under Liezietsu of changing party constitution at ‘their whims and fancies’, the MP explained the procedures involved to amend the constitution and asserted that a constitution amendment committee is set up and it does not bypass the CEC or any other important organs of the party. With regard to the eighth amendment of the party constitution, he informed that after the amendment was drafted and printed, the first copy was sent to the ECI on 18 May 2016, following which more copies were printed out and distributed on 9 February 2017.
The MP asserted that the party constitution was ‘not just written for show’, but that everything is laid down in it for the party functionaries to follow. So also, he added, the ECI does not just keep the constitutions of parties in cold storage but as the guardian of all the political parties, it sees to it that parties strictly adhere to the rules, norms and procedures written in their respective constitutions.
What the rival group needed, he opined, was to read and understand the constitution properly.
In the party’s constitution, he pointed out that the legislature wing consisting of 48 NPF MLAs, has a very limited role to play in the party organisation. According to him, the party organisation is a completely different entity wherein the legislature wing was just another component whose primary role was confined to the state assembly and if the party is in power, their role in the government. As far as the legislature wing’s connection with the party organisation is that, one-third of the total number of legislators are CEC members on rotation for 12 months, he said, so 16 out of 48 are CEC members including the legislature party leader and the chief whip are permanent members throughout their tenure. He pointed out that in the present case, 11 out of the 14 are with Liezietsu and the other 3 have been expelled. Therefore, he stated that the CEC members claimed by Rio’s party when they signed their CEC petition to the ECI was invalid.
Also, he said, as far as powers are concerned, the legislature wing’s is equated with that of youth/women/farmers wing and under no circumstances can they supersede and dominate or overshadow the powers of the central office. “They are not authorised or empowered to even appoint or impeach even a village level functionary… So technically and constitutionally, they are not the competent authority to have a say on the impeachment or the appointment of, least of all, the president of the central office. It is completely out of question,” Kenye stated.
Therefore, he said, it does not qualify the elected interim president to re-designate himself again as president or to call a CEC meeting or to convene a general convention, and all the powers Rio and his group have exercised are not from the constitution of the party and are technically invalid.
On the party whip issue, Kenye claimed that under no circumstance can the legislature party elect the party whip because the chief whip is an appointed post which can only be done by the party.
Legislators can elect their legislative party leader but not the chief whip, he stated, and further alleged that NLA speaker has broken all assembly rules of business by accepting TR Zeliang as the NPF whip without even rejecting the appointment of Kiyanielie Peseyie who was the party whip since November 2014.
He also reminded that Rio and the 36 rebel legislators were signatories in electing Liezietsu as the party president for the tenure 2015-20 during the NPF general convention in November 2014, records of which are lying with the ECI.
