All candidates are supposed to be eligible for selection as parliamentarians

Aug 21, 2020 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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General elections allow citizens to choose the President and representatives to sit in the National Assembly. When a citizen votes, he or she is casting a ballot simultaneously to elect the President and for the List of Candidates which was submitted by the party of his or her choice.
That List of Candidates relate to persons who are contesting for election to the National Assembly. The List is not for election as a member of Cabinet.
When a party therefore puts up its List of Candidates, it is from this List which it generally has to select its parliamentarians, depending on the number of seats which the party secured at the elections. Electors vote for a List on the presumption that all those on the List are eligible for election as parliamentarians.
It is therefore, nonsensical, having selected persons on a List, to disqualify those very persons from being eligible for selection as parliamentarians. This is what the PNC/R has done in relation to its List.
The PNC/R is now claiming that persons who would have served 15 years in the National Assembly are no longer eligible to be selected as the party’s parliamentarians. Why then did the party place these persons on the List of Candidates if it had criteria which would have disqualified these persons after the elections?
It makes no sense placing persons’ names on the List of Candidates when they are disqualified by the policy of the party from being selected as parliamentarians. Once they are on the list, they should be eligible for selection.
Guyana has a representative system of government. Those in parliament represent the persons who voted in support of the List of Candidates on which those persons were represented. It is contemptuous of the people to place a candidate on a List and then after the elections to inform those who voted in support of the party that some of those on the List would not have been selected anyhow because there are term-limits on party parliamentarians.
The party has the prerogative to decide who goes to parliament. This right is not being questioned. What is being questioned is that having gone to the electorate with a List, after the elections you cannot then turn to the same electorate and tell them that certain persons on the List were not selected because they served more than 15 years.
If that was the understanding before the elections, then those persons should not have been on the List. If the criteria were developed after the elections, this would be unethical because the electorate would have already voted on the presumption that all the candidates were eligible for selection.
Analysts have speculated that the non-selection of Volda Lawrence effectively hands the position of Leader of the Opposition to Joseph Harmon. Not necessarily so. There is no provision in any agreement which says that the Leader of the Opposition must come from the PNC/R.
If you were to go by seniority, then the Leader of the Opposition should go either to Raphael Trotman or Khemraj Ramjattan; they are the two most senior parliamentarians and one is a Leader of his party.
The non-selection of Lawrence actually works in her favour. She can now concentrate more fully on party work. This will allow her to mount an effective challenge either for the leadership of the party or for the retention of the Chairmanship. She is therefore not necessarily disadvantaged by her non-selection, even though her supporters see this non-selection as a slight.
It is not likely that Mr. Harmon can easily succeed David Granger as Leader. He lost in a bruising contest at the party’s last Congress and he was not a member of the Executive. He recently had to be co-opted so Lawrence and Basil Williams will still be seen as frontrunner to succeed Granger.
Granger has proven to be a wily leader. He does not have 15 years of parliamentary service but has opted not to return to the National Assembly. But he is not giving up the leadership of the party having lost three successive elections – two local governments and a General Election – to the PPP/C.
Harmon is not likely to command the support needed to succeed Granger. But Lawrence or Williams are not automatic shoo-ins either. There is a wildcard out there and speculation that he is tipped to take over whenever Granger calls it a day.
That person is Trotman. There is speculation that is the one who is likely to be asked to take over when Granger calls it a day on his political career. Interesting times lie ahead for the PNCR and, for that matter, the AFC.

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

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