Leader of the Peoples National Congress-led A Partnership for National Unity (PNC-APNU) Aubrey Norton says one factor behind his party’s crushing defeat in the September 1 polls was that some supporters believed voting for another party would somehow help the PNC–APNU.
Speaking during a press conference on Friday, Norton said the party has been analyzing the circumstances surrounding its defeat and it has decided that its public relations strategy needed to be improved.
Norton, who was the APNU’s presidential candidate, said that despite having a strong campaign team, a solid manifesto, and doing the necessary groundwork, the party’s efforts were undermined by voter bribery and a lack of awareness among its supporters.
“Bribery played a critical role and I can give you examples of cases where persons who are supporters of the APNU were actually bribed and now they say to you ‘they sorry, they made a mistake’ but they thought voting in that particular direction would help the Opposition,” Norton, once Opposition Leader, said.
“In these elections, I won’t say which particular party, but they bribed Toshaos, they bribed persons who would normally support us. I can tell you in Linde, you could go and check the amount of motorcycles that were purchased for people,” he added.
In the last parliament, the APNU and is former coalition partner the Alliance For Change (AFC) occupied 31 seats in the National Assembly, forming the main parliamentary opposition. Of these, the AFC itself occupied 9 of those seats, while the remaining 22 were held by APNU politicians.
But based on the results of this year’s General and Regional Elections, the APNU’s influence in the next parliament, scheduled to open on November 3, has weakened.
The main parliamentary opposition will now comprise the We Invest Nationhood (WIN) party headed by US-sanctioned and criminally-indicted businessman Azruddin Mohamed.
WIN picked up 16 seats while APNU gained 12, and Forward Guyana Movement (FGM) earned 1 – forming the parliamentary opposition.
APNU has also lost power at the regional level, where it previously controlled Regions 4, 7, and 10.
In the leadup to the elections, General Secretary of the Peoples Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) Dr Bharrat Jagdeo repeatedly warned that WIN’s campaigning would hurt the opposition more than the governing party.
In a post-election press conference, Jagdeo had expressed that, “…the signs were there, they refused to accept what was clear, what was evident to every other Guyanese…But they stuck their heads in the sand and refused to deal with this situation.”
“We saw it coming, they should have seen it coming…[but] they persisted with this fallacy that somehow he [WIN’s presidential candidate] would have gotten the PPP/C support and cause us to be a minority government,” Jagdeo had also noted.
Meanwhile, according to Norton, going forward, the issue of bribery could be addressed through strong election campaign financing laws.
Norton will not be returning to parliament but has pledged to remain active in politics and assist with the party’s rebuilding efforts, noting that he will not make the same mistakes of former president David Granger, who reportedly abandoned the party after losing the 2015 elections.
On the party’s choice for the new Members of the Parliament (MP), Norton said he does not owe the public any justification for its selection, particularly the exclusion of members such as the party’s former Chief Whip Christopher Jones.
The new parliamentarians are: Terrence Campbell, Juretha Fernandes, Ganesh Mahipaul, David Hinds, Sharma Solomon, Vinceroy Jordan, Nima Flue-Bess, Saiku Andrews, Coretta McDonald, Riaz Rupnarain, Dexter Todd, and Sherod Duncan.
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