Latest update March 28th, 2024 12:59 AM
Oct 04, 2019 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom
The PNCR has a plan. It is negotiating a new agreement with the Alliance for Change but it has not entered into any new arrangement with the Guyana Action Party (GAP), the National Democratic Front (NDF), the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) and the Justice for All Party (JFAP) which forms part of A Partnership for National Unity (APNU).
The PNCR knows that those parties will take what they get. Those parties electoral support pale in comparison to that of the Alliance for Change. Yet they each received a Cabinet seat and the WPA, with the least support of the group, has managed to snare important jobs for some of its cadres.
The four smaller parties of the APNU will take whatever the PNCR gives to them. They will not quarrel because they know that they do not have negotiating leverage.
The AFC should use this fact to its advantage. It should question how it is that the smaller parties –GAP,WPA, JFAP, and NDF – are entitled to a seat without demonstrating their electoral appeal, and the AFC which held the balance of power in the 2011 elections, is being forced to renegotiate an agreement which brought the APNU+AFC into office.
The Prime Minister slot is a non-issue. There is no provision in the Constitution or in any law, making it mandatory for parties to name Prime Ministerial candidates. That is PPPC concoction from 1992 when it fielded Cheddi Jagan as Presidential candidate and Samuel Hinds as the Prime Ministerial candidate. And since then there has been an expectation that there should be a Prime Ministerial candidate.
This is false expectation because voters do not cast their ballots for any Prime Minister. They vote for the parties and it based on the results of the votes cast that the presidential candidate of the party with the most votes earns the right to be President.
It is the President who then names a Prime Minister. So there absolutely no need for any Prime Ministerial candidate especially if this is bound to create divisions within the coalition.
The more important issue is power-sharing within the Coalition. The WPA for one has indicated that it has hardly been consulted by the APNU. And as is known, despite the AFC having 40% of the Cabinet seats, this does not override the fact that executive authority resides with the President. Cabinet is merely an advisory body.
But while the President has the authority to override Cabinet, it would be much better for the AFC instead of concentrating about the divisions of the spoils of elections, to name certain demands in relation to Cabinet.
It should insist that the Cabinet decisions should be approved by a special majority. The concept of what constitutes a majority has given the APNU and the AFC some problems. But this fact should not prevent the AFC from demanding that all Cabinet decisions require the approval of three-quarters of the Cabinet. This may lead to gridlock but it will also lend itself to greater consensus in decision-making.
The AFC, however, is not likely to go this route for two reasons. For one, the AFC is interested more in positions rather in the consensus in decision-making.
And the second reason is that the AFC knows that “boat done gone a falls”. It knows that the negotiations taking place are of mere academic importance since regardless of who is chosen as Prime Ministerial candidate, the AFC will never get the chance to hold that post.
THIS IDIOT TELLING GUYANA WE HAVE NO SAY IN THE 50% PROFIT SHARING AGREEMENT WE HAVE WITH EXXON.
Mar 28, 2024
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