SHILLONG, MAY 5: In a major boost to the Conrad K Sangma-led National People’s Party (NPP), its alliance partner, the People’s Democratic Front (PDF) on Friday officially announced its decision to merge with the ruling party.
The PDF has two MLAs in the Meghalaya Assembly and the merger will increase the NPP’s strength to 28 in the 60-member House.
The crucial decision was unanimously taken at the PDF’s general council meeting chaired by its president and Sohra MLA Gavin M Mylliem at Shillong Club, in the presence of the working president and Mawkynrew MLA Banteidor Lyngdoh.
The official merger will take place at the NPP’s state office at 4pm on Saturday.
The merger document will be officially signed between NPP national chief Conrad K Sangma and PDF chief Gavin M Mylliem.
“The main agenda that was brought to this programme was the proposal of the central executive committee (CEC) to merge with the NPP. Of course, we all know that to get this decision move forward, we need to get the consensus from all members of the general council where two-third majority voting is required and we could see that in this meeting, all the members present in the general council gave the signal for us as front liners of this political party to move ahead with the merger,” Mylliem told reporters after the meeting.
The PDF chief said that there have been requests made by many political parties with regards to this merger but majority of the party members are politically inclined to go with the NPP considering its ideologies and different agendas.
“As a party we have been working together with the NPP for the last five years under the MDA government and under the able leadership of the chief minister Conrad K Sangma, who is also at the same time the NPP national president. Through a series of discussions, most of the members are politically inclined to the NPP considering the ideologies and also what has been said in the manifesto of the NPP,” he said.
When asked, Mylliem maintained that they are not dissolving the PDF and said, “This is a case of merger where two parties combined to make it one. Tomorrow in the formal programme there will be a grand welcome by the NPP to all leaders of the PDF.”
“We will be signing the merging document tomorrow. As you all know in our preparation for this 2023 elections, we all had different agendas that were being placed and being said in front of the public so that is the reason why we as members of the CEC, we thought that all these agendas need to be written in the form of an official document so that tomorrow there will be official signing of this agreement,” he added.
Asked if a cabinet berth has been promise to the PDF, Mylliem however said, “On the cabinet post, it totally depends on the wisdom of the chief minister.”
He however made it clear that the two PDF legislators have already been assigned as advisers of different departments – Lyngdoh as the adviser of the agriculture and farmers’ welfare department and Mylliem as adviser of the health and family welfare department.
“We will be in the same party with NPP. I would like to be clear that in the past few days we also had a meeting with the chief minister where he had clearly stated that the NPP will reorganize its organization in the coming months where he has given confirmation that he will accommodate all our party members be it from the primary level to the CEC level in the NPP,” he added.
On the resignation of its vice president and former MDC James Ban Basaiawmoit as a mark of protest against the merger move, the PDF chief however said that Basaiawmoit had never mentioned such things in his resignation letter. “He (Basaiawmoit) had only stated he resigned on personal grounds so we as CEC also take that that it is based on personal grounds,” he concluded.
By Our Reporter
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