President agrees to review Cummingsburg Accord

Nov 26, 2017 News

Political partners, the Alliance for Change and A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) have signaled their intention to honour the review clause in the Cummingsburg Accord that gave rise to the governing coalition Government.
President David Granger, who leads the larger APNU fraction, said the AFC is within its right to request the review.
“There is a requirement to review the accord after three years and that three year will expire at midnight on the 13th of February, 2018 so it is quite within the right of the AFC to request the review. I don’t have a problem,” the President told reporters.
In recent weeks, the AFC has tried to stave off a flurry of leaked emails which showed top officials in disagreement with President Granger’s unilateral appointment of Justice James Patterson (ret’d) as the Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM).
Publicly, the AFC has endorsed Patterson’s appointment, but internally, party leaders have faced severe heat from senior members who believe that the party was not fulfilling its mandate as a member of the coalition. Further, the views were also critical of the President.
“I normally do not comment on the internal functioning of my partners,” President Granger replied when questioned by reporters about the leaked emails.
He added, “I am quite confident that the leader of the AFC [Raphael Trotman] could manage matters that affect his party. I don’t comment on the WPA, I don’t comment on the AFC. I don’t comment on any of the parties.” On Friday, the AFC publicly voiced its disappointment over the President’s decision to appoint Desmond Trotman, 72, to replace Sandra Jones as GECOM Commissioner. In doing so, the President overlooked the AFC nominees, former MP, Trevor Williams, to replace Jones, and Beverly Alert as an alternative nominee to Williams.
Acknowledging that 65% of the electorate is under the age of 40 years, the AFC expressed that the appointment of the GECOM commissioner should have taken this salient point into consideration.
The AFC stated that rank and file members have expressed reservation about the appointment and were expecting the new commissioner to be a youth or a woman as was proposed by the party.
“This issue reinforces the position of the NEC for the review of the Cummingsburg Accord,” the AFC stated following Desmond Trotman’s swearing on Friday.
After the two sides signed the Cummingsburg Accord on February 14, 2015, the AFC signalled its intention to carefully monitor the Accord and the implementation of its provisions.
The party named a Cummingsburg Accord Review Committee (CARC) of eight members—Dr. Vincent Adams, Dr. Rohan Somar, Marlon Williams, David Patterson,
Joel Edmond, Sherod Duncan and one representative each from the party’s Women For Change and Youth For Change.
The AFC’s National Executive Committee (NEC) has mandated the party leadership to formally write to APNU with regard to review and revision of the Cummingsburg Accord. This process must be completed by the third anniversary of the signing of the Accord – February 14, 2018.
Already, the party’s executive has named members in the negotiating team, in anticipation of APNU similarly naming its negotiating team. There have been reports that AFC was not too comfortable with the current Cummingsburg Accord which details how the two coalition partners would divide up the ministries. It was signed in the lead-up to the May 2015 General Elections, which was called early after Parliament was prorogued.
Under the current configuration, the AFC has received the portfolios of the Prime Minister, Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Public Infrastructure, and the Ministry of Agriculture.

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