In the wake of the suspension of Parliament by President Donald Ramotar, APNU today called on all Guyanese to oppose what it said was one-party dictatorship. The APNU release follows.
A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) calls on the entire nation to resist the People’s Progressive Party/Civic’s (PPP/C’s) imposition of a one-party dictatorship in Guyana.
President Donald Ramotar promulgated a Proclamation to prorogue parliament on Monday 10th November 2014 that peremptorily paralysed the parliamentary process by preventing formal sittings of the National Assembly.
The President’s Proclamation stifled the voices of the people’s legitimate representatives in the National Assembly. The ‘Proclamation’ extinguished the expectations of the Guyanese people who, almost exactly three years ago in November 2011, voted for A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and the Alliance for Change (AFC) to have the majority of seats in the National Assembly.
APNU refutes allegations that that dialogue between the Opposition and the Government had been discontinued, thereby provoking the extreme measure of prorogation. The last meeting between an APNU team led by Brigadier David Granger met a PPPC team led by President Donald Ramotar on Monday 20th October 2014.
APNU accuses President Ramotar of single-handedly and single-mindedly engineering a constitutional crisis in order to promote the PPP/C’s partisan political programme at the expense of dealing with pressing national matters. The main purposes of the ‘Proclamation’ are to allow the PPP/C to establish a ‘de facto,’ one-party dictatorship, to avoid parliamentary scrutiny and to evade its responsibility to the people. President Ramotar has presented a constitutional pretext to:
- obstruct debate on the Opposition’s ‘no-confidence’ motion;
- postpone the holding of local government elections;
- prevent debate on financial excesses and impropriety;
- protect delinquent Ministers from parliamentary sanction;
- permit the PPP’s campaign for general and regional elections to proceed; and,
- provide for the continued expenditure of state funds without parliamentary scrutiny.
APNU calls on the entire nation – civil society; non-governmental organisations; professional organisations; political parties; religious organisations; social groups and trade unions – to resist the President’s objectionable and obnoxious ‘Proclamation’ to prorogue parliament. The President has no grounds for this assault on parliamentary independence.
APNU calls on all Guyanese not to accept this denial of democracy and not to allow the PPP/C to implant a ‘one-party’ dictatorship in Guyana. APNU calls on all the good people of Guyana everywhere to join in a civil movement for the restoration of parliamentary democracy by peacefully resisting the PPP/C’s resort to dictatorship.
