The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has said the leading opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has lost its purpose and is now a liability to partisan democracy.
The party said this while reacting to the claims made by PDP acting national chairman, Umar Damagum, at a press conference on Thursday.
Damagum had alleged that the APC was plotting to use some “hugely compromised election petition courts” to upturn some of its victories.
But reacting, the APC in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Felix Morka, said the PDP has continued to wage attacks calculated to disparage, denigrate and blackmail democratic institutions, particularly, the judiciary into submission to its nefarious electoral agenda.
The statement reads in part, “PDP’s hallucinations about one-party state is understandable only in the context of its unrealized plan to rule Nigeria for 60 years but now seeks to taint APC with its own scripted crude, intolerant, unpatriotic and anti-democratic zealotry.
“What is by far more repugnant, devious and a clear and present threat to our democratic way of life is the PDP’s relentless and unjustified objurgation of our courts and judges. The PDP has maligned and poured invectives on our judges at every turn since its miserable performance in the general elections.
“When it is not accusing judges of bias or corruption, it is calling for the disbandment of some judicial panels. Yet, the same party has been the biggest beneficiary of the vibrancy and independence of the judiciary since the country’s return to civilian democracy in 1999.
“In its psychotic hypocrisy, the PDP screams to high heavens when court judgements are against it, but jubilantly extols verdicts by the same judiciary in its favour. Such anti-democratic and insanely manipulative politics is wrong and has got to stop.
“Indubitably, the PDP has lost its purpose, its essence, if it ever had any. As a ruling party, the PDP was a reckless rolling stone of corruption and underdevelopment, now rudderless and antithetical to the idea of what an opposition party ought to be. The PDP is a liability to partisan democracy.
“In other democracies, opposition political parties offer answers to national important questions and provide competing visions for good governance and economic development. The PDP cannot even manage its own internal affairs let alone offer valuable contributions for the good governance of our country.
“Rather than dissipate its low energy on rallying other opposition parties into a phantom coalition, the PDP may wish to undertake critical introspection, reinvent itself, if not already too late, instead of blaming the courts and others for the self-inflicted hot mess the party is in, or save our partisan democracy the embarrassment by winding down altogether.”
