No impositions here

Tweet Not for the first time, I found myself yesterday reading a story about internal events in Plaid which is significantly at variance with reality. "A Plaid source" has given a story to the paper which contains a number of things which are, at the most charitable, misleading.

The most obvious example is the suggestion that the party centrally might try and 'impose' a candidate on Carmarthen East and Dinefwr constituency. As our rules (available on the party's website for anyone who wants to wade through them) make perfectly clear, the party's NEC couldn't impose a candidate even if we were minded to do so. The selection will be made by the members in the constituency, on the basis of one member, one vote.

The NEC cannot even tell the constituency who they should or should not include on the shortlist - shortlisting too is entirely a matter for the members in the constituency. The only rôle the party centrally has is in maintaining a list of approved candidates - a list which any member may apply to join.

Conclusion? "A Plaid source" is either woefully unaware of the party's own rules and processes, or else is using the Western Mail to deliberately spread inaccurate and misleading information in pursuit of his or her own agenda.

The most surprising aspect to me was that a normally perceptive journalist should have been so easily misled.