The PNCR today announced a series of meetings to introduce to the public the five persons vying to be its presidential candidate this year.
What has been billed as town hall-styled meetings will provide the candidates with an opportunity to present their policy positions and vision to the public and for the reaction to them to be gauged before a congress finally picks the candidate.
The inaugural meeting is set for Friday, 14th January at 5 pm at the Queenstown Community Centre, Essequibo. The first one in Georgetown is fixed for January 21 at 5 pm at the Bishops’ High School. (See full schedule below.) The PNCR says that all members of the public and the media are invited to attend.
The five candidates are: James Bond, David Granger, Carl Greenidge, Faith Harding and Basil Williams.
The procedure for picking the PNCR candidate has been hailed in political circles as progressive and allowing party members and others from across the country to assess the nominees. This system has not been employed before by the PNC. There had been calls for the PPP/C to adopt a similar process but it has declined.
PNCR Chairman Bishwaishwar ‘Cammie’ Ramsaroop had also been nominated and approved by the leadership but later declined.
At its weekly news briefing on Friday, PNCR General Secretary Oscar Clarke said the Presidential Candidate Process Committee had received responses from nine nominees by the January 3 deadline by which they had to provide their acceptance, résumé and bio data. “Six of the nine nominees had so responded and the committee proceeded to evaluate those responses. They were all found to be in order in every material particular and as a consequence were recommended to the Central Executive Committee as being suitable candidates,” he said.
The CEC, he said, met on Wednesday and received the committee’s report and approved the recommendations. It was following this that Ramsaroop withdrew from the race. There were other nominees who submitted their documents after January 3, Clarke said, but they were not considered since their submissions were after the deadline. The announcement of the approved nominees was to be done by December 30 but was later extended at the request of two of them, who had sought more time to get their documentation together while the Special Congress had been originally slated to be held by February 19.
The next stage is the party-sponsored town hall-style meetings from Friday. “The candidates themselves will be out and about at the behest of the party. We’re going to be having a meeting with these candidates next Wednesday evening (today)… they’re gonna be signing on to a code of behaviour which we would expect them to uphold during the period between now and the Congress,” Clarke said.
SCHEDULE
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