Deputy Speaker and leader of The New Movement (TNM), Dr. Asha Kissoon is being accused of breaching the agreement of trust, signed between three small parties after the 2020 elections.
In a statement at the weekend, A New and United Guyana (ANUG), one of the parties signatory to the Memorandum of Understanding, said Dr. Kissoon has failed to honour the agreement.
ANUG claimed that Dr. Kissoon should have resigned from her post in November 2023 but has refused to do so until now.
When contacted on Sunday for a comment, Dr. Kissoon would offer none.
“I have no comments at the moment,” she said in response to a request for an interview.
ANUG, TNM and The Liberty and Justice Party (LJP) agreed under the MoU to merge their votes to secure a single seat in Parliament and to share occupation of that seat in proportion to the votes each party earned.
“The result of the election was that LJP and ANUG, each with more than 2200 votes, would occupy the single seat won by the merger for the majority of the time, while TNM, with 244 votes, was entitled to occupy the seat for 91 days,” ANUG explained in the statement.
The Constitution of Guyana provides for the removal of a Member of Parliament only by his/her resignation or by his/her removal by the representative of his party’s List, so Dr. Kissoon would have to resign to make the seat vacant for the representative from ANUG.
Shuman, Leader of the JLP, occupied the seat from September 01, 2020 to March 31, 2023 – a total of 31 months.
If Dr. Kissoon had resigned in November 2023 as claimed by ANUG, she would have occupied the seat for eight months. To date, she has been an MP for 11 months.
“Because TNM was allocated only a few months by virtue of the Memorandum of Understanding, and was at risk of being kept out of Parliament altogether, in the event that an early election was called in 2025, ANUG offered to permit TNM to take the seat for their allotted period immediately when Mr. Schuman demitted.
“However, Dr. Asha Kissoon has now held that seat for more than twice her permitted allocation under the arrangement of trust set out in the Memorandum of Understanding. She has so far refused to relinquish her seat, and remains an imposter in possession of the seat as a Member of Parliament against the will of the electorate as a result of her breach of trust, and has not committed in writing to ANUG to any timeline whatsoever to demit office,” ANUG’s statement further added.
ANUG claims that Dr. Kissoon had made a verbal promise to vacate the seat on February 29, 2024 but has failed to submit her resignation until now.
In January 2024, ANUG introduced Althia King as its elected representative to Parliament.
Dr. Kissoon, 34, studied medicine in Cuba, and currently serves as the doctor in charge of the Sophia Health Centre; she entered politics for the March 02, 2020 elections as the presidential candidate for TNM.
At a press conference in March 2023, Dr. Kissoon was optimistic about becoming a parliamentarian and signalled all intentions to honour the agreement during a joint press conference with representatives from ANUG.
kissoon & those left at TNM a joke, couldn’t full a minibus with votes now.à
How unethical she is as a “doctor”… it’s disgraceful to the profession….her word has no value, her actions shows she’s power drunk…y’all sober she up