Less than a week after its first protest outside of the Ministry of the Presidency (MotP), the Mass Action People’s Movement (MAPM) — a civil society group— has reiterated calls for President David Granger to respect the Constitution by resigning and setting an elections date.
Unless this is done soon, the MAPM is promising to continue its demonstration outside the Ministry of Presidency.
This was disclosed by MAPM member Johnathan Yearwood on Thursday while speaking at the picketing exercise where a number of protesters had assembled and waving placards.
“Let’s go to the elections, let the people vote, let a government be elected and let’s have a government that has a mandate to run the country, until then, we will be out here protesting because we disagree with how the President is behaving,” Yearwood stated.
Adding to this, the MAPM member posited that President Granger should set example of being a law-abiding citizen, while noting that since the final rulings handed down by the Caribbean Court of Justice (CJJ), he has demonstrated otherwise— given his reluctance to resign, dissolve Parliament, and call elections.
“We are saying that he must do the honourable thing, he must do the right thing, he must set the example of abiding and honouring the Constitution of Guyana, which so far he has failed miserably to do because he had shown no indications of honouring it”, Yearwood asserted.
Similar views were echoed by another member, Don Singh, amongst which he made mention of the upsurge in racial tension across the various social media sites, which according to him, has stemmed from the country’s current political climate.
“But what is happening in our country is that slowly on social media sites (Instagram, Facebook) we are seeing an upsurge in racial baiting, in racial attacks on both sides, and if that is allowed to continue, by us not having out elections as per Constitution, it will get out of control”, Singh explained.
On his concluding note, Singh took the opportunity to shed light on the organisation’s dissatisfaction with the now caretaker Government over the past years in office.
“We have a President that had three press conferences in four and a half years, we want to be reassured by our President that we elected that things are okay and this is what’s gonna happen, but we hearing a side-line gyaff. We just fed up so, we as regular Guyanese say let’s come out and ask the President very straightforward,” he highlighted.
The protest was held under the theme “Disrespect for the Constitution = Disrespect for Guyanese”.
It was organised by the group which was responsible for the mass movement against the parking meter project in the city—originally called the Movement against Parking Meters (MAPM) but now is rebranded as the Mass Action Peoples Movement (MAPM).
