Hitting back at the NPCC for criticizing chief minister Dr. Shürhozelie Liezietsu, the NPF central media & press bureau said that the Congress party was “hell bend for leather to show the discerning public its fantastic ignorance of the Indian parliamentary norms and procedure by calling the chief minister as “unmandated” when the 60-member House has endorsed his leadership.”
NPF reminded NPCC of the Constitution, which provides that an unelected member can head the House/ Parliament provided he/she gets elected within a period of six months.
It said the same had happened before in Nagaland in 1987 when Hokishe Sema was sworn-in replacing SC Jamir, and in 1990 when Vamuzo was sworn-in when they both were not being members of the Assembly. NPF further took a dig at the Congress for 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.
NPF said the way in which NPCC was looking at the appointment of Khriehu Liezietsu as advisor to CM from the jaundiced eyes, seemed to have permanently afflicted them with the disease, saying: “It would appear to the party (Congress) as if it is an act of “nepotism in the state to greater heights” surpassed only by the Mother-Son duo of its High Command surrounded by a coterie of sycophants grovelling and falling over each other in their mad rush to please the Mother-Son duo.”
NPF categorically stated that the fact of the matter behind the Khriehu’s appointment, 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.
NPF said there was a clamour of demands to reward him for making the supreme political sacrifice at the CEC meeting on June 14 last, and accordingly, the appointment was made.
Therefore, NPF said 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. NPF said the Congress party, which is on the verge of falling into political oblivion with no allies or helping hand insight, seemed to have developed a nasty allergy to political parties flush with allies like the NPF, which has no shortage of politically like-minded parties determined to edge out the Congress from the political scene in the region and country.
It also reminded Congress, that when the country slowly limped back to normalcy from the dark era of Emergency imposed by the Congress, the forerunner of the NPF realised the danger posed by INC and formed alliance with non-Congress national parties in 1977.
“Since then, there has been no looking back and with the emergence of BJP to take on the might of the Indian National Congress which had been looting the nation like the ancient marauders, the NPF has realised that the BJP is its natural ally,” NPF stated.
It said a regional party like the NPF, to ensure the security, rights and interests of the people, must align itself with national political parties, whether they in power or not, to stop recurrence of the dark years the country went through the Emergency period in the 1970s brought about by the Congress, or the blatant embezzlement of national funds like the country had witnessed under Congress rule for which prominent Congress leaders were still languishing in Jail for their misdeeds.
Rather pointing out the issue of “freezing” of the NPF party symbol 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, NPF said it would be more relevant in the Naga context if the fact that the Congress party sold out the wishes and aspirations of the Naga people to solve the Naga political problem and went against the clarion call issued by the Naga people as a whole.
It alleged that the Congress party did not want to solve the Naga problem and kept it pending all those years when it was in power in State and at the Centre.
NPF also pointed how the present NPCC president, K. Theire was sacked unceremoniously from the Congress ministry in 2002. When Therei came to power in 2003, NPF said he went on to use un-parliamentary words in the Assembly against his former leader which had to be expunged from the records.
Therie was again dropped unceremoniously from DAN I after a short period “when his ambition got the better of him and went back to his former leader in abject humility much against his arrogant nature, adding, NPF said, adding, “he more than ate his humble pie: he swallowed back his vomit.”
However, the Congress leaders after realizing the need to come together for an early solution to the protracted Naga political problem, came together to join the DAN III in mid 2015, NPF stated.
In this regard, NPF said the Congress was compelled to change its leadership and the “present leadership was para-dropped from nowhere.”
NPF alleged that Therie started to take revenge on his perceived foes in the shape of his former colleagues and expelled them all from the party, saying he was “now a general without Soldiers.”
With elections just round the corner, NPF said the Congress party, as expected, was making noises just for the sake of being heard. “But howling alone won’t get the Congress party its mates, for the party is yet to go through an acid test of achieving victory in electoral battle under the leadership of K. Therie,” it added.