Right of first refusal

Actually he did not create it; he merely exhumed it from the political graveyard. Speaking at PDP’s South West sensitization rally in Lagos on Saturday, Jonathan described his endorsement as PDP’s sole presidential aspirant by the party’s major organs last week as giving him the right of first refusal to the ticket. He said he […]

Actually he did not create it; he merely exhumed it from the political graveyard. Speaking at PDP’s South West sensitization rally in Lagos on Saturday, Jonathan described his endorsement as PDP’s sole presidential aspirant by the party’s major organs last week as giving him the right of first refusal to the ticket. He said he now has the right to accept or refuse PDP’s presidential ticket before it can be declared open for contest. The statement gave the impression that the president was yet to make up his mind on whether or not he will run but his very next statement gave the game away. He said adopting him in this way is the practice in advanced democracies.
It is pertinent at this point to ask Oga Jonathan to tell us which advanced democracy charted this path. If it is the US, the usual reference point for dubious Nigerian claims, the assertion is not correct. I have been closely following newspaper, magazine, radio, television and lately internet accounts of every twist and turn in US presidential contests since 1976. I cannot remember an occasion where the party that controls the White House ever sat down and declared the president as its sole aspirant to the exclusion of any other interested person. The fact that most of the time a US president is not challenged for the nomination by serious contenders within his own party does not make him the legal sole aspirant.
The fact is, if any party member wishes, he can challenge the US President for the nomination as happened sensationally in 1980 when Senator Edward Kennedy challenged President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic Party’s nomination. While Ronald Reagan was slugging it out with George Bush Senior for the Republican ticket, Carter was having a very bruising primary contest against Kennedy. Carter ultimately won the primary but when he lost the main election to Ronald Reagan, he blamed Kennedy’s “excessive attacks” during the primaries for his loss. The important point to remember here is that Carter was not made the Democrats’ sole presidential aspirant, so it cannot be the practice in the USA.
If Oga Jonathan was referring to Britain, the other reference point for dubious Nigerian claims, that is not the tradition either. Old timers around here would remember the Conservative Party’s bruising internal election of late 1990, when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was challenged for the party leadership by two strong contenders. Even though she got the highest number of votes when the parliamentary party voted, she failed short of the two thirds majority needed to win on the first ballot. She then withdrew from the race before the runoff, leading to the rise of John Major. Why wasn’t she made the sole candidate?
Even in Nigeria and in fact within the PDP, right of first refusal such as Jonathan described it is not the tradition. As recently as 2003 when President Obasanjo was up for re-election, he vied for PDP’s nomination alongside several other aspirants, notably Dr. Alex Ekwueme and Alhaji Mohamed Abubakar Rimi. The contest was broadcast live on television with Obasanjo’s men shouting “continuity” while Rimi’s supporters were shouting “change!”
PDP must have changed its practice only recently because in 2011 when Jonathan first sought the nomination as an incumbent president, he was challenged by former vice president Atiku Abubakar and they had a keen contest. So what precipitated this change of nomination procedure? President Jonathan said at the Lagos rally that his endorsement as sole candidate “shows clearly that PDP is advancing.” You call that advancement, when a party moves from an internal primary election involving many contenders to one in which major party organs endorse one person, quite obviously in violation of the party’s constitution? I saw yesterday a statement by another PDP presidential hopeful who rhetorically asked if his party has become a Communist party. [As an old Communist, I was not amused by that comparison.]
Now, many Nigerians are wondering whether PDP’s endorsement of Oga Jonathan as sole candidate is due to an advanced democratic principle or due to a low political principle of rub my back I rub yours. One newspaper reported that the deal to get all the major party organs to endorse Jonathan involved a trade off in which first term PDP governors will also get a right of first refusal to re-contest for their offices while second term governors will get two rights of first refusal, to anoint their successors and to get senatorial election tickets. Already, a problem is brewing on this matter because the presidency and the party leadership had earlier promised PDP’s lawmakers the same right of first refusal in return for their support. The lawmakers’ ambitions and those of some outgoing governors are mutually irreconcilable.
I said earlier that Jonathan merely exhumed the phrase right of first refusal. Actually, it was smuggled into the political terrain by PDP lawmakers in 2011. This phrase exists in company law and also in property law, e.g. where partners in a business must be given the first option to buy out a partner who wants to pull out of the business. Its meaning in politics is however a total distortion and an upending of democratic principle. A party that grants this right of first refusal to its elected public officers all across the board is primed for internal conflict and implosion. A political party is not a worship centre; what else are other people doing in the party other than waiting for a chance to contest elections? If it is only the people who are already in office that can contest, all the other members have been shown the door.
Now, one of the observable oddities of Nigerian politics is that most other parties tend to copy PDP in its structure and mode of operations even while they are busy assailing it for corrupting Nigeria’s democracy and governance. Many ideas such as having a board of trustees, zoning of party and elective offices, top-down control structure, lack of political ideology or coherent program, having a national leader above elected party officers, welcoming decampees without regard to their antecedents etc are PDP creations faithfully copied by other parties. It will not be too long from now when the right of first refusal will seep into other parties.
It is good at this point to remind Oga Jonathan that situations do arise where a president cannot even exercise his legal right to contest in his party’s primaries, much less claim an exclusive right to do so. I am thinking of January 1968. The primary contest for that November’s elections was just starting when US President Lyndon Johnson went on television to make a startling announcement. He said, “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.” That is, not only will he not seek the nomination but he will not accept it even if the party hands it to him on a platter of gold.
Why did LBJ, known to be one of the most manipulative men in American politics, make such an ostensibly selfless decision? Actually it was because of the Vietnam War. Under his watch, the low intensity war that he inherited from John Kennedy had snowballed into the nastiest war his country had waged since Korea. There was strong reason to believe that his fellow Democrats will not re-nominate him to contest again in 1968 or if they did, the party could go down to defeat in the main election.
There are similarities between Johnson and our Oga Jonathan other than inheriting a war and worsening it. 1968 was to Johnson what 2015 is to Jonathan. Johnson completed Kennedy’s term in 1963-4, was elected in his own right in 1964 and was up for re-election in 1968 until Vietnam spoiled the show. Oga Jonathan completed Yar’adua’s term in 2010-11, was elected in his own right in 2011 and will be up for re-election next year, unless Boko Haram spoils the show…