Anyim Canvasses Autonomy For PDP State Executives

26.01.2006

FORMER President of the Senate, Anyim Pius Anyim, a leading contender for the office of the national chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has said that the best way to restore the confidence of the people in the party would be to maintain the independence of the executives at all levels.

Anyim, in a statement on Thursday by his Media Assistant, Mr. Bernard Akoma, said the autonomy of the party executives from the wards to the national level would offer the executives the latitude to take independent decisions.

Anyim insisted that the independence of the local government and state executives would reduce the domineering influence of godfathers and subsequently reduce the imposition and manipulation of the internal democratic process of the party.

Anyim, according to Akoma, said this while on the campaign tour of South-South States to market his vision and mission for the party.

Addressing stake-holders of the party who trouped out to receive him in Delta and Edo States, Anyim said that the party more than ever before was in dire need of change.

He said, "Many members of our party are demanding that the party mechanism be strengthened to reflect trans-parency and openness as to guarantee certainty of rules, such that everybody must earn what he is entitled to."

He regretted that the confidence of the people in the ability of the party to deliver justice was steadily waning.

He said, "Today, the expectation of members of our party is that their confidence in the party needs to be strengthened; otherwise, a number of our members are losing confidence in the mechanism of the party to carry everybody along."

Proffering ways out of the dwindling fortunes of the party, he said what was needed was to strengthen the original vision of the founding fathers of their party.