LEADER UNDER FIRE FOR MISLEADING INFORMATION

Plaid Cymru members in the Llanelli Constituency are understood to be furious with further resignations.

This follows a number of inaccurate claims made by Party leader, Leanne Wood, in an article published in the Western Mail on Wednesday 14th March.

Mari Arthur was imposed as Plaid’s Candidate for the 2017 General Election by the Party centrally despite coming second at the hustings and therefore not the choice of the local Constituency Party.

In the election, Ms Arthur recorded the lowest vote for Plaid in the Constituency for 25 years coming a distant third behind the Tories.

Firstly, Ms Wood stated that she had not met Mari Arthur prior to the selection procedure.

This is not reflected in a Western Mail article dated Friday 20th October where Alun Ffred Jones is quoted…

” Llanelli did not have a candidate in place. Leanne had met Mari Arthur and considered her a good candidate.”

“Leanne was also aware that we had only a small number of female candidates.”

This quote was also sent in an e-mail from Alun Ffred Jones to the former Constituency Secretary, Gwyn Hopkins dated 3rd September 2017.

Secondly, Ms Wood states the rules were broken because the choice of the local Constituency Party was not on the approved list of Candidates.

Councillor Sean Rees, the local Campaign Manager and organiser at the time was in fact “conditionally” accepted onto the National Register of Candidates but only permitted to stand in Gower or Swansea (who already had candidates) but not in Llanelli, his home town.

None of us have any recollection of this ever happening before in the history of the Party.

The Llanelli Constituency Committee met and unanimously proposed for Sean Rees to be put forward as a potential candidate for the hustings. 32 members attended this meeting.

Plaid Cymru HQ were informed the next day of the list of potential candidates that were being put forward to the hustings which included Mr Rees. 

There was no intervention at all from the Party centrally before the hustings that Mr Rees couldn’t take part but after he won, they proceeded to rule him ineligible to stand.  

The rules were broken though, in the fact that Mari Arthur was not on the approved list of Candidates and had only been a Party member for a few months.

This is a breach of standing order 3.1 which specifies that “an applicant must have been a member of the Party for a continuous period of one year or more.

Additionally, 20 members mainly with addresses in Cardiff or Trimsaran were registered last minute to vote for Mari Arthur at the hustings. A leaflet was also distributed at the hustings with an image of both her and Leanne Wood on it showing the favouritism of the Party leader.

Despite the odds being stacked up against him, Sean Rees still won the hustings with 46 votes to Mari Arthur 42 votes.