The Peoples National Congress (PNC)-led A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and the Alliance For Change (AFC) continue to face hurdles in their negotiations on forming a coalition ahead of the September 1 General and Regional Elections.
Recently, three AFC members and parliamentarians crossed over to the PNC/APNU, with one of them agreeing to the that party’s prime ministerial candidate, running alongside Aubrey Norton as the presidential candidate.
However, these crossovers were apparently done in secret, with the AFC members – Juretha Fernandes, Sherod Duncan, and Deonarine “Ricky” Ramsaroop – not officially informing their party or even resigning from their posts.
In fact, news of these crossovers was leaked to the press earlier this week, prompting the AFC to issue a statement explaining its lack of knowledge on the developments. In fact, the AFC said in light of the news, they have proceeded to cancel the membership of the three members.
Responding to this during his press conference on Friday, Norton criticised this action by the AFC, labelling it as “petty”.
“The AFC has gone at least to ten of our members and asked them to work with them, most of them didn’t but at least one of them on the East Coast (of Demerara) did, but we didn’t proceed to expel them, they’re still in our membership…But pettiness is part of life,” Norton expressed.
The PNC/APNU leader also said there was nothing wrong with Fernandes, Duncan and Ramsaroop crossing over to the APNU while they were still AFC representatives. This is despite the fact that PNC’s Geeta Chandan-Edmond was criticised by the party’s members for supporting the Peoples Progressive Party (PPP) while still a PNC member and parliamentarian.
According to Norton, “We see the coming of Juretha, Ricky and Sherod as a case of people who are interested in coalition and coming to join us to ensure that the coalition reflects the APNU+AFC.”
In this regard, he explained that the PNC/APNU is still opened to discussing the possibility of a coalition with the AFC.
The AFC recently scaled down its proposed seat allocation from an initial 65 per cent to 35 per cent, a proposal that PNC/APNU has also rejected. In its scaled down proposal, the AFC also demanded the prime ministerial candidacy.
But Norton said he has already promised that position to Fernandes and it would be up to her to give it up in the interest of forming an PNC/APNU+AFC coalition.
“If Juretha wants to give the opportunity to the AFC to select the candidate, we have no problem with that, but we said, we will not give her our word and then renege on it to satisfy a late request when we have been negotiating for months with some impossible suggestions like we should take 35 per cent and the AFC should get 65 per cent,” Norton said.
Norton also explained his reasoning for selecting Fernandes as the party’s prime ministerial candidate, noting that all PNC/APNU members agreed with the decision.
“I spoke with all the persons in the APNU…and we generally agreed that we needed Juretha Fernandes as the prime ministerial candidate. She has the intellect, she is a woman, she is from the indigenous community and in contact with the indigenous community and we believe she’s qualified to be prime minister. I wouldn’t pit her against Ganesh Mahipual because Ganesh himself was involved in these discussion and agreed at Juretha is a good choice,” Norton said.
He added that Mahipaul could potentially be a Vice President should the PNC/APNU win the elections.
Even though the PNC/APNU is moving ahead with preparations for the elections as an individual entity, Norton said the door is always opened for a coalition with the AFC.
On the other hand, AFC Leader Nigel Hughes had told this publication that since its latest proposal was rejected and in light of the crossover of the AFC members to the PNC/APNU, the chances of a coalition now are marginal.
General Secretary of the Peoples Progressive Party (PPP) Dr Bharrat Jagdeo has since opined that the two sides will come together to form a coalition out of desperation.
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