The Secretary General of the National Patriotic Party (NPP) Mr. Andrew Peters says Vice President Jewel Howard Taylor remains the Standard Bearer of the NPP, claiming that she was not expelled by anyone as being reported.
A faction of the NPP loyal to embattled chairman James Biney recently held a convention in Montserrado County and issued a resolution in which it announced the expulsion of Madam Taylor and former Vice President John Gray, respectively.
In their decision, the Biney faction of the NPP said a communication should be sent to President George Manneh Weah, telling him to “recall” the two expelled persons, from their governmental posts.But the NPP Chief Scribe Mr. Peters recently told our Bong County correspondent that that those who say they have expelled VP Taylor are not even members of the Party.
He stresses that a non-partisan does not have the right to any member of the party.He terms Biney’s action as waste of time and argues that Biney doesn’t hold legitimacy to the party and his plans to destabilize the most experienced party in the Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC) will fail.
The NPP is a member of the ruling CDC which comprises President Weah’s Congress for Democratic Change (CDC), Madam Taylor’s NPP and former House Speaker Alex Tyler’s Liberian People Democratic Party (LPDP).
According to Mr. Peters, if any member of the NPP feels disenchanted about something in the party, they need to firstly pass through the Grievance and Ethics Committee, instead of sitting at the back doors and single handedly writing what expulsion.
“What I am telling you is that Mr. Biney is not even a flow member of the Party and he does not have any right to write communication to anyone about the expulsion of our Standard Bearer,” Mr. Peters adds.He says the recent decision by Mr. Biney is illegitimate and urges Biney to seek legal redress at the National Elections Commission (NEC) and stop giving T-shirts to non-partisans of NPP to go for convention.
Madam Taylor’s recent expulsion from the NPP, a party founded by her ex-husband, imprisoned former President Charles Ghankay Taylor, has raised tension in Bong County with majority members of the NPP in the county saying the decision is regrettable.
“This is not fine for us as NPP Partisans, Vice President Jewel Howard remains our Standard Bearer and no one will expel her until the six years finish,” Peter Dolopaye, a member of the party says.Mr. Dolopaye says he was asked to join the NPP in 1997 by Former President Taylor, angrily noting that those who claim to be members of the party need to be thinking about improving the party.
“If we continue doing things like this, it will clearly tell the world that we [are] not able to maintain the party in the absence of its former leader Charles G. Taylor. We need to put ourselves together for the better,” he says.
By Joseph Titus Yekeryan in Bong–Edited by Winston W. Parley
