Electoral reforms: Ebonyi PDP advocates staggered election

Abakaliki

The Peoples Democratic Party in Ebonyi State chapter has said elections to the various levels of governance should be conducted separately on designated days as a means of minimizing ambiguity and cumbersomeness in the process.
The Party, which yesterday, threw its weight behind the National Assembly’s move to rearrange the sequence of elections in the country, observed that such a move would entrench credibility and meritocracy in the entire process.
In a statement issued in Abakaliki by the state chairman of the party, Barrister Onyekachi Nwebonyi, praised the National Assembly for rearranging the election sequence in the country, and added that it was not targeted at witch hunting anybody or any political party.
“Election to the office of the president should come last if things should go naturally. Elections should hold from the bottom to the top. This will help make the decisions of the component units to count and help influence the top and not vice versa. This sequence will more or less look like the American Electoral College whereby the result is easily predictable from the popular votes, before the college vote even begins.
“The sequence will help trace malpractice more easily. If the presidential election result is far different from the expected outcome, it will be easy to trace the pattern of voting in the various areas.
“We conduct the state assemblies first, followed by the House of Representatives, senatorial, gubernatorial, and lastly the presidential primary. If you do it from top down, those who have won at the higher levels will influence the election, as well as the outcome, at the lower level.
“There should be five separate elections on different days with the legislative houses coming first in ascending order, and executives’ coming later in the same order. By so doing nobody would ride to victory on the back of another”, the party said.

Leave a Reply