GEORGETOWN, Guyana, Apr.17, CMC – The main opposition People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR)-led A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and the Alliance For Change (AFC) will not be coalescing to contest this year’s general elections as talks between the two sides have collapsed.
This was confirmed late Thursday by AFC Chairman, David Patterson, who said “regrettably, we have, despite the best efforts of our negotiation team, been able to arrive at a mutually beneficial arrangement with APNU.”
Patterson declined to say why the negotiations collapsed. “We know that there’s a lot of work to be done, and we know that time is against us. That is why we’ve made the decision to kick start officially,” he added.
He did not rule out a coalition before Nomination Day, but at the same time “we will proceed with our campaign as Alliance For Change since time is of the essence.”
That party insisted on someone other than PNCR/APNU Leader Aubrey Norton being the presidential candidate, having the Representative of the List of candidates and the Speaker of the National Assembly.
But when asked whether the AFC was asking for too much, Patterson said “obviously not”.
Meanwhile General Secretary of the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C), Bharrat Jagdeo said he was not surprised with the breakdown of coalition talks between the APNU and AFC, since he believes they were too caught up in splitting the “spoils” of the elections.
“The fact that they cannot come up with a consensus candidate is largely because, they don’t look at what they want to do for the country…They don’t think about, let’s come together and create a programme of what we want to do for the people of this country. The only order of business in the coalition talks was about who gets what if they win the government. How many seats one party will get in the parliament, how many government jobs they will get, how many ministerial jobs they will get, which portfolio they will get. It is all about sharing spoils. They see Government as an opportunity to share spoils,” Jagdeo said.
However, he said, the decisions taken by the APNU and the AFC with regards to their Presidential Candidates is of no concern the PPP/C.
“Regardless of the form you put together or the candidate who leads your campaign, you have to contend with two things when you face the electorate. One, your track record, and two, your plans for the future. And they have a dismal track record, they have had 28 years of failure, stealing elections. When they ended their tenure are 28 years, the country was as poor as Haiti,” he said.
He contended that between 2015 and 2020, when the APNU+AFC took office, thousands of persons lost their jobs, and a number of welfare programmes were terminated. He said even as the parties head to another election, the opposition parties have failed to effectively articulate their future plans.
“It is all about distribution of money, nothing about creation of wealth for people, nothing about how we satisfy the needs of our people for housing, in fact, they want to support rentals, help them to pay their rent by using oil money to do that, not ownership. So, you have no plan for the future,” Jagdeo said.
The PNC has touted a Peoples’ Centered Plan, while the AFC plans to unveil its Pathway to the Future Plan.