By Wevole Ezin.
Senator Bassey Gershom has said the defeat of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar in the recent presidential election has dampened the morale of our party men and supporters in Cross River State.
Senator Bassey disclosed this to newsmen yesterday in Calabar, in reaction to the outcome of the 2023 presidential electon that saw the emergece of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) as the president-elect.
Bassey, who represented Cross River southern senatorial district in the 9th senate, said results of the general elections demands an urgent reapprisal by the main opposition party.
He said: “It is time for us to all go back to the drawing board and see what we did right or wrong. This has been a verdict from the people of the southern senatorial district. So we in the PDP have to go out and do some soul searching to see how we can get things right next time.
Everybody’s moral is low, Labour was just a phenomenon. A situation were somebody who did not even print a poster, won the House of Representatives election against a very experienced legislator. It is a very unusual occurrence and that was a complete tsunami. Labour won the state and that affects all other parties going forward but fortunately for us, Labour does not have a gubernatorial candidate, otherwise we would have been in trouble”.
He attributed the PDP”s defeat, especaily at the presidential poll to the division that bedeviled the party prior to the 2023 general elections, noting that all hope was not lost for its redemption.
According to Bassey, “The lessons we can learn for next time is that the PDP has been greatly divided because if you look at everybody that won, they are all former PDP members, including the Labour party candidate that won. Next time could be anytime, it could be in a re-run election, run off election or governorship election but these are some of the lessons we must learn deliberately for the next elections.”
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