Staff Reporter
SHILLONG:
National People’s Party (NPP) national vice-president and incumbent Deputy Chief Minister Prestone Tynsong remained tight-lipped on the party’s choice of chief minister in the upcoming elections.
“No arrangement [made] at all,” Tynsong told reporters when responding to a query on whether the chief minister this time will be from the Jaintia or Khasi Hills.
Tynsong added that the leader will be appointed only by the newly elected legislators of the party.
However, Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma has been maintaining during his electioneering in Garo Hills that by voting for him, people would be voting for the next chief minister of Meghalaya.
The 2018 assembly polls broke the dominance of the Congress and brought the NPP-led MDA to the fore.
At the time, Tynsong was projected to take the seat of chief minister. On why that did not happen, Tynsong said, “I think you know better. Again, I recently saw they replayed that video when our late (United Democratic Party) president Donkupar Roy said we are going to form the government provided that Conrad K Sangma is the chief minister.”
With veteran Congress leaders having defected to Meghalaya Trinamool Congress, the latest entrant to the state’s political landscape, NPP’s strategy will be to cross the half-way mark and form the government on its own.
“From the leadership of the NPP, be it the national president and me being the national vice-president, our decision is very clear: We said, let us cross the bridge – meaning we need to get 33-34 seats.Then, stability will be there,” he said.
Tynsong cautioned that differences in ethnicity should be set aside, “because we are all Meghalayans”. However, he cautioned that “we will not allow anybody from outside Meghalaya to become CM … it should be within the state, so no need to mention Khasi region or Jaintia region or Garo region. I think that is wrong”.
He further added that Meghalaya was too small to afford sectarian divisions between its dominant ethnic groups, “so we need to be one – only then can we become stronger and carry the programmes of the party to the destination where the people wanted to”.