APNU still to decide on Ramjattan as Prime Ministerial Candidate

Leader of A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and President of Guyana David Granger on Thursday skirted around questions on whether his party will be going to the March 2020 polls with Leader of the Alliance For Change (AFC) Khemraj Ramjattan as the coalition’s Prime Ministerial Candidate.

Speaking with the media at the sidelines of an event at the Pegasus Hotel in Kingston, Georgetown, Mr Granger said the issue of the Prime Ministerial Candidate is up for discussion as the APNU and AFC seeks to update the 2015 Cummingsburg accord.

“A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and the Alliance For Change (AFC) are discussing the Cummingsburg Accord of 2015 and this is one of the issues that will have to be discussed but I cannot say now who I’ll be running with,” Mr Granger said.

Asked if the candidate will be chosen from the AFC faction, the APNU Leader did not respond in the affirmative but noted that “it is not prudent to anticipate the outcome of negotiations.”

The Head of State said the idea is to come up with a revised Cummingsburg Accord.

The Accord, which was signed on February 14, 2015, to form the coalition, gives the AFC the Prime Minister post. The accord is valid for 60 months.

The AFC, the second-largest party in the Coalition that contested and won the May 2015 elections, on June 15 last voted to replace current Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo on the slate for the upcoming elections.

Ramjattan recently told the media that the chances are “very good” of him being selected as the Coalition’s Prime Ministerial Candidate for the upcoming general elections.

“You don’t think that Ramjattan is good enough to be a Prime Minister of your country or you think that he is such a rotten character that he ought not to be?”

On August 12, the AFC announced that the coalition partners are looking to amend the accord and said the process will last four weeks.

After several meetings, they are yet to reach a conclusion.

Over the past four years, the AFC complained that it did not get exactly what it bargained for.

However, following the December 21, 2018, No-Confidence motion which was passed against the Government with support from an AFC member, Charrandass Persaud, critics have said the party has lost its bargaining power,

The AFC team in the renegotiation process is led by the General Secretary David Patterson and includes National Executive members Dominic Gaskin and Dr Vince Adams; the APNU team is led by their General Secretary Joseph Harmon.

Patterson, following the commencement of negotiations, had stated that the two sides will also discuss campaign financing among other issues.

The next General and Regional elections in Guyana is set for March 2, 2020.