Kohima: After the recent “defection” of 21 MLAs from the Naga People’s Front (NPF) party, the party’s president Shürhozelie Liezietsu, on Thursday, declared the party a “disease-free party.”
“From now on, we will be able to move forward with accurate mathematics. Any single step we gain we will start counting it to be a permanent asset for us,” he told party workers during an emergency meeting of the party’s Central Executive Committee (CEC) at the NPF central office in Kohima.
He said that the defection of the MLAs and their “followers” should be taken as a normal move as it has occurred in the past several times. “Now that they have gone on their own as expected, we will take it to be a good riddance,” Liezietsu said.
With the recent political development, he made a comparison of the political party with that of a football team. Like the players in a football ground, he said that legislators in the “Assembly ground” cannot blame the president of the team or the football association they play for when the players fail to “score the goal”.
The defection of 21 MLAs on April 29, he said, might have come as a surprise for the general public and Rio led Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP) but not for the NPF. The defection at the moment may be a setback for the party, he said that this setback will not remain long.
During the emergency CEC meeting, the house also adopted a six-point resolution where it lauded the four legislators who did not join the NDPP party, praising them for displaying matured political leadership acumen in safeguarding the image and aspiration of the Naga people while the others chose to betray the trust of the party and the electorates.
The party also reaffirmed its stand on the Naga Political Issue and urge the centre to an honourable, acceptable and inclusive solution at the earliest.
Despite the inclusion of all the four NPF Legislators in the Core Committee on the Naga Political issue and the appointment of the leader of the NPF Legislature Party, Kuzholuzo Nienu as Co-Chairman of the all-party alliance–United Democratic Alliance (UDA), it said that the house felt that its party leader deserves a better position in UDA as agreed earlier to be an equal partner in the decision making.
The party also resolved to uphold the party under the leadership of its present party President Dr Shurhozelie Liezietsu and NPFL legislature party leader Kuzholuzo Nienu. The house also endorsed the party President to undertake to restructure and strengthen measures in the party working system at all levels.
Further, the party said it would work on forging alliances with friendly political parties in the state for the coming elections.
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