With national elections slated to be held next year, the Alliance For Change (AFC) has told its former coalition partner that it wants to remain independent in its political operations for now.
This was revealed on Tuesday by Leader of the Peoples National Congress (PNC) Aubrey Norton during a press conference.
“The last position I know that we had with the AFC, was that we will continue to operate as a parliamentary opposition, APNU/AFC, but that the AFC wants to do its political work, for now, by itself. And at the right time, we will look at coalition politics,” Norton explained.
The AFC is now headed by Nigel Hughes. Over the weekend, the party had a rally in Linden, Region Ten (Upper Demerara-Berbice).
During his press conference, Norton was also asked about the event and whether he told PNC supporters to stay away.
He responded, “the AFC didn’t advise us that they were holding a meeting in Linden. In fact, like everybody else, I saw it the day before or two days before, on social media.”
Norton, who is also the country’s Opposition Leader, added, “I would have assumed that if you are a political party and you consider us to be an ally, and you’re holding a political activity and you want our support, you would engage us to say ‘look, we’re having this activity’…”
The AFC had formally broke its coalition deal with APNU back in December 2022. The revised Cummingsburg Accord, a political agreement between the two parties, had provided for this separation. At the time, former AFC Leader Khemraj Ramjattan had indicated that the two parties would do their political work separately but work in parliament jointly.
During their time in office, the minority AFC had been criticised for the submissive role it played to the APNU. Decisions the former Government made, such as the closure of sugar estates, which put thousands of sugar workers out of jobs, were passed unchallenged and even supported by the AFC. This is despite the AFC retaining the Agriculture Ministry portfolio.
This passive relationship with APNU was cited by former AFC parliamentarian Charrandas Persaud, as one of the reasons he voted for the No-Confidence Motion that brought down the APNU/AFC Government in 2018.
As it stands now, the PNC, despite being the largest party in APNU, does not hold the chairmanship of the coalition.
That is because in June, the parties within the APNU coalition – the Guyana Action Party (GAP), the National Democratic Front, Equal Rights and Justice Party, and the Guyana Nation Builders Movement – held a meeting and elected GAP’s Vincent Henry as the new Chairman of APNU, a move which the PNC has deemed “null and void” since they were not aware of the elections.
In fact, Norton continues to maintain that he is the Chair of APNU.
