Update on Negotiations – Revision of Cummingsburg Accord

Nov 17, 2019 AFC Column, Features / Columnists

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Following our last report to you on October 24, discussions between the parties (APNU and AFC) resumed with several productive high-level meetings between the Leaders as well as between the two negotiating teams.
Our National Executive Committee (NEC) met on November 2 and received a full report on all aspects of the negotiations. As a demonstration of its commitment to maintaining the APNU+AFC coalition, the NEC approved a request to extend the mandate of the negotiating team to November 10, 2019 in order to conclude the revised Accord.
Despite significant progress, that deadline was not met and the NEC was again briefed on the current status of the discussions, and the request by APNU for a final meeting.
In light of the tremendous progress made, and the commitment shown by all parties to complete the revised Cummingsburg Accord, as well as the significant impact the new Accord is likely to have on the upcoming General and Regional Elections, the AFC has agreed to a final meeting tomorrow, Monday, November 18, 2019. A single outstanding matter is to be resolved. All other terms of the Accord have been provisionally agreed upon.
Following that final meeting, the AFC will launch our election campaign in all ten (10) Administrative Regions of Guyana. This is expected to commence on/before Saturday November 23, 2019. Our campaign management team and international consultants have already begun the arduous work to take us into the March 2020 elections.
CAMPAIGN OFFICE COMMISSIONED
Last week we commissioned our East Coast campaign office, and Leader, VP Khemraj Ramjattan, gave a lot of praise for the amount of work our East Coast RNC has been doing. He remarked that it is generally very difficult and challenging for a Third (political) Party to remain relevant and needed for any length of time. “The AFC has defied this logic and all of ‘their’ expectations, and today, 14 years after our heavy launch in November 2005, we are still here, still fighting to make the lives of every single Guyanese better, right alongside our partner, APNU.”
At the same event in Lusignan, party Vice Chairman Cathy Hughes stated that good things come in small packages: “That’s the AFC; we’re the modern day David, small but powerful”. She added, “We (members) have to find all kinds of ways to convince Guyanese people that the promises the PPP is making are patently false. 50,000 jobs … now??? What happened to the 23 years before 2015? Ask them how long ago they signed the contract to do the Lusignan road that this Government is fixing. False promises!” she reiterated.
So we celebrate our small victories then move on to the next 10 things, every one of which is just as important.
General Secretary David Patterson took the impromptu stand at the opening and declared that the AFC is the subject of one of the most amazing stories in the English-speaking Caribbean. “Every single day across the Caribbean there at least 6 columns in as many newspapers that talk about the AFC – every day, so don’t let anybody tell you that the AFC is going down.
“We remain the only party in the Caribbean that has remained vibrant for 14 unbroken years. So put on your yellow t-shirts, spread the message, tell everybody about the ICT hubs and free computers in your community, better security, new infrastructure, and your needs that the coalition is satisfying,” he said.
There is a lot more coming when you re-elect the APNU+AFC Coalition, many more projects to complete, on the way to making your lives much, much better than it was.
Thankfully, Guyana has grown past the days when we had a government that sponsored ‘Phantom’ death squads. They denied it up to the end, but nobody was fooled. The evidence was there and raging police brutality was at its peak. Drugs/narcotics running gave us a parallel economy and Guyana was known all over the world as the drug transshipment capital of South America. We were disrespected everywhere we went.
As Guyanese, except at airports where we couldn’t hide our passport and nationality, we just did not want anybody to know where we came from. That knowledge meant unpleasant experiences for us in foreign countries that we visited for vacations, funerals, weddings and such.
Even in neighbouring Trinidad and Tobago, there is a Guyanese man who lived there for over 30 years before he ‘outed’ himself as a Guyanese in 2016. His neighbours had no idea. He has always been a very respectable person and they all assumed that he was a ‘Trini’. He told them after he made the confession that it was much better for him that they did not know, and he told them about the unfortunate events that happened to a couple of Guyanese friends on the island. They were eventually deported to Guyana after living in T&T for the same length of time.
So Guyana’s previous Government was powerful and they were sure that they had everybody convinced that the economy was stable. The capital city was a garbage dump that the PPP Ministers openly said they had no intention of cleaning up! In fact, nowhere was properly cleaned, and drainage canals were useless.
Guyana was a failed state and the international community knew it. We were classified by the IMF and all the world’s donor organizations as a Highly Indebted Poor Country, and we were saddled with a so-called government that didn’t give two hoots as long as their pockets were full.
We cannot throw away Guyana’s future by voting the PPP back into government. We’d like to keep our newfound pride and to hold our heads up high!

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper)

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