Working president of the United Democratic Party (UDP) and cabinet minister Paul Lyngdoh today said that the performance of his party in the district council elections, the results of which were announced yesterday, were below par.
The UDP won only five seats in the KHADC and three in the JHADC. Lyngdoh was the MDC for Jaiaw in the outgoing KHADC but chose not to seek re-election. Jaiaw was also one of the 17 seats that the Voice of the People Party (VPP) was elected from.
Lyngdoh informed that the UDP will meet formally and analyse where things went wrong and try to recover lost ground.
He also acknowledged that the win of the VPP in the KHADC has shown that it has emerged as a major player in the state’s political dynamics. “…But again as the longest and biggest regional party (the UDP), now the task ahead of us is to ensure that we also pull our socks up and try to optimise our potential as a party,” Lyngdoh said.
In one way the UDP is seeing this result as a positive, as it marks an improvement from the Lok Sabha election of last year where the party’s candidate for the Shillong seat covering Khasi-Jaintia Hills, polled dismally. However, Lyngdoh said that the UDP needs to recover at a faster pace.
On the VPP’s win, he said that it is always easier to criticise when one is not in a position of power but now the VPP will have to show it can walk the talk.
