Mudslinging continue in NPF to claim legitimacy

Newmai News Network

DIMAPUR |Aug 6

The Naga People’s Front headed by Dr Shurhozelie Liezietsu said that “legality is with Dr Shurhozelie and TR Zeliang continues to be the chief minister by blatant aberration of the laws“. 

In a hard hitting press release issued today, the NPF headed by Dr Shurhozelie blamed TR Zeliang for the expulsion of Neiphiu Rio from the party in 2015. The statement also said that Neiphiu Rio’s ministry was reduced to a minority as there was a revolt within the party in 2004 but it was Dr Shurhozelie Lizietsu who came to the rescue of the former.

Neiphiu Rio and TR Zeliang are now joining hands against Dr Shurhozelie. Rio is the “Interim President” of one of the two NPF factions which supports TR Zeliang.

According to the statement, Neiphiu Rio, during Jamir’s Congress ministry, found it “suffocating to remain under his leadership when his ego and ambition ballooned into the size of several football fields and his colleagues found it obnoxious and began to avoid him as best as they could”.

It also stated, “By the fag end of the Congress ministry, Rio found he had landed himself in a not-so-enviable position of possibly being denied even the party ticket for the ensuing elections in 2003. And so, he orchestrated a grand political manoeuvre, hollow though it was to those who were in the know, by resigning from the ministry in September 2002. It was a huge political development at that point of time because he was the then Home minister; and to his erstwhile colleagues, a huge relief as they considered his departure as a very good riddance”.

Further the release said, Rio was reduced to a minority when in the later part of 2004, Z Obed mustered the support of 17 NPF legislators and demanded that Rio be replaced. “But party president Dr Shurhozelie, who was elected to the post at the General Convention of the party in Dimapur in the later part of 2003 replacing Vizol even though he, Dr Shurhozelie was an elected member, extended full support to the then minority chief minister and Rio could overcome the revolt within the NPF party.

It continued Rio is the “disrespected and dejected” President. “Dejected because he is the “interim President” and according to the NPF Constitution, there is no such post as interim, Ad Hoc or work charged president; dis-reputed because Rio will go down the annals of Naga history in infamy as the successor of Noke whose flash-in-the-pan tenure as president of the dissident NPF camp lasted only till the crisis lasted and had to attend the Special General Convention of the NPF on April 30, 2015 donning a skin thicker than that of a rhino, the Mascot of Kaziranga,” it also stated.

The statement then said that, it is “astounding how the expelled NPF legislators” could console themselves with a make-believe “amnesty period” of fifteen days when the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution of India clearly mentions that the political party can condone defiance of the Whip within fifteen days. “This period is in no way an Amnesty as the erring legislators seem to think. Anyhow, defiance of the Whip issued by NPF chief whip Kiyanilie Peseyie occurred on July 21 and the fifteen day period to condone the travesty had already expired and there is no turning back,” it added.

According to the statement, the “ill-advice” that the chief minister TR Zeliang seems to be receiving has been made conspicuous when he filed disqualification petition against the ten NPF legislators.

“He is not the ticket-issuing authority for the NPF party and he never was. To begin with, he is not the Chief Whip of the NPF party and he would do well to keep in mind that if it was not for the queer action of the Speaker to support him. The whip issued by him ought to have been rejected outright,” maintained the release.