General Secretary of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo on Thursday said any decision on executive power sharing must be premised on trust.
“Trust building is important for any system to work especially at the level of the executive. In the absence of trust, there’ll be no movement forward,” he explained during his party’s press conference.
Jagdeo was at the time responding to a column written by Annand Goolsarran in the Stabroek News titled “Is it not time for us to embrace a system of shared governance?” Goolsarran argued that the “winner takes all” arrangement has affected the country from reaching its full potential.
But the PPP General Secretary said his party cannot enter into such an agreement which will affect the delivery of its manifesto promises to Guyanese.
“We are not going to explore an arrangement where we cannot deliver on the promises made to people of the country…we can’t go to them and say APNU blocked us from doing it because then they will say why are you there,” he posited.
Referring to attempts by the main political opposition – the APNU+AFC – to rig the 2020 General and Regional Elections and allegations of elections rigging in the past, he further questioned: “Why would anyone want to share executive power with a political party that is racist in its outlook or that pushes violence or that steals elections. Who’d want to be tainted by sharing power with that political party?”
Nonetheless, Jagdeo said his party is engaged in power sharing at other levels of the government.
This includes several rights commissions and the parliamentary committees.
He also referenced the constitutional requirement for both sides to agree to the appointment of the Chancellor and Chief Justice of the Judiciary.
“We have a unique Constitution and many of the measures we put in place are not in the laws of most Commonwealth Countries to involve the opposition,” Jagdeo outlined
For the APNU or AFC to be considered worthy of executive power sharing with the PPP, the General Secretary said they must first move away from elections rigging and from using racism as a mobilising tool.
At the PPP level, he said his party already practices shared governance by inviting its civic members to form part of the Government “but it is with people who are like-minded.”
According to Jagdeo, approximately seven of its cabinet ministers are civic.
“They are not card bearing members of our party but they came to us with the understanding that they will subscribe to our manifesto, our programme and that they will be respectful of people, democracy, freedom of people and they’re not going to steal elections or campaign on the basis of race since we are a multi-ethnic party,” he emphasised.
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