APNU touts continued coalition… but insists on Constitution being guide

Nov 19, 2019 News

A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), the largest faction of the governing coalition, has indicated that its negotiations with the Alliance for Change (AFC) will continue, with the Constitution as a yardstick.

AFC Negotiator, David Patterson

This comes despite yesterday being the last day that the AFC said it would negotiate with its partner.
The smaller party has promised that if the talks with the APNU coalition do not yield favourable results, it would go into the upcoming General and Regional Elections alone.
Its lead negotiator is its General Secretary, David Patterson.
AFC was formed in the mid-2000s gathering momentum, and after entering into a coalition in 2015, was given seven ministerial seats.
APNU in a statement yesterday that the talks would be guided by the Constitution – quite similar to the argument the party reportedly used to dispute the AFC’s right to name the coalition’s Prime Ministerial Candidate.
APNU had contended that the President reserves the sole Constitutional right to appoint a Prime Minister, despite AFC saying that its right to name AFC Leader Khemraj Ramjattan as the PM candidate is a non-negotiable tenet of its accord with APNU.
The 2015 agreement expires early next year.
The People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR), the largest party in APNU, has posted and, in doing so,

APNU Negotiator, Volda Lawrence

essentially co-signed epithets labeling the AFC’s “political posturing” as “concerning” and “spoilt-childness”.
During the most recent press conference by the AFC, its Treasurer, Dominic Gaskin, said that the two parties are yet to sort out the formula for the allocation of local government, parliamentary and ministerial appointments.
A source said that APNU is not interested in conceding to the AFC as many seats as it did the first time around.
Lead APNU negotiator, Volda Lawrence, has said that she does not think negotiations with AFC should be put on public trial. That explains why APNU has been more mum than AFC on the details of the negotiations.
What is clear is that APNU has already sorted out the formula for the allocation of seats to its constituents.
In a press statement made yesterday, the party said that its Executive Committee met with all parties being represented.
The Guyana Action Party (GAP), the Justice For All Party (JFAP), the National Front Alliance (NFA), the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) and the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) were reportedly involved in a meeting chaired by President David Granger.
Elections, sparked by the December 21, 2018 no-confidence motion, are slated to be held on March 2, 2020.
The party said that its negotiation team briefed the constituents on the Cummingsburg Accord, and an approach was recommended for the continuation of negotiations with the AFC, even though the smaller party has indicated its adamancy to contest the election solo if it did not have its way by yesterday.
APNU stated that it intends to make sure there is an end to ‘winner-take-all’ politics in Guyana, and contest the 2020 elections as a coalition.
Up to press time, there was no word from the AFC on how it will contest the election.

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