No primaries for popular aspirants

Opposition Liberty Party or LP executive Mr. Abraham Darius Dillon says an aspirant for a district seat on LP ticket who brings in 5,000 members will automatically become the party candidate when the other aspirants seeking the same ticket fail to recruit 5,000 members.

He told a local radio station in Monrovia on Wednesday, 10 May that in districts where two or more LP aspirants are seeking to contest on the party ticket, each of them will be given membership forms with a challenge to recruit 5,000 members into the party.

He says it is intended to validate the aspirant’s claim that he or she has friends and supporters in the district that can be won over to the LP. But he warns that failure on the part of an aspirant to to get the required 5,000 members, they would lost the ticket to those who will bring the number demanded by the LP.

Mr. Dillon adds that the 5,000 names when submitted to the LP will be verified through the voter roll ID number and the precincts. According to him, the party has an opened and transparent process where everyone goes to primaries.

According to Mr. Dillon, if the Party has only one aspirant within a district seeking to contest the legislative elections on the party ticket, such person will not go for primaries on grounds that they have a clean sheet.

He adds that if two aspirants recruit 5,000 members each, both of them will go for primaries, with each of them asked to bring in 50 delegates, following which they will be given one hour each to convince their contenders’ candidates to vote for them.

When asked about the resignation of the Treasure Madam Nowoe Scott and others that have left the party, Mr. Dillon argued that “we are” in a democracy and people are expected to exercise their rights. Mr. Dillon says there is a tendency in the party that they do not denigrate or bad mouth anyone who leaves the party, though he says it hurts to see a partisan leaving.
By Samuel P. Kamara-Editing by Winston W. Parley