With the entire Republic looking forward with bated breath to the first sitting of the National Assembly, one has to wonder as to the reason why – at least according to President Ramotar – APNU has called for the postponement of the summoning of the august body. Rumours abound as to the reasons why APNU appears not to be ready to take up its seats in Parliament. The first, we are told, has to do with the fact that their engine room people are still engrossed in sorting out those pesky pieces of paper which every Guyanese now knows as Statements of Poll. It has been the buzz phrase of the 2011 elections. Statements of Poll…thousands of pieces of paper with assorted numbers printed on them which APNU has asked to go through, one by one, with a fine teeth comb, so to speak to determine whether these myriads of numbers of those thousands of pieces of paper correspond to what GECOM told us were the results of the elections. A humbug it may be but APNU says it has to be done, that it may yet pick up a few votes, here and there that might raise questions about GECOM’s mathematics. And according to APNU sources they are reluctant to set foot in the National Assembly until the tedious verification work is done.
Another reason, we are told, has to do with the selection of APNU’s MP’s. Now those APNU leading lights who may have earned seats at the parliamentary table or thought that they had done so might all come from the same side of the fence but when it comes to Parliament that is where they part company……and we are told that there may have already been a fetching away over the exclusion from the parliamentary list of the PNC’s one-time General Secretary, Aubrey Norton. There are those who swear that Norton’s work during the campaign would have earned him the nod over names like James Bond, a Johnny-come-lately Attorney at Law and Winston Felix, the predecessor to the now near-retired Police Commissioner Henry Greene. And we are told that Norton’s supporters, the Linden crew, ain’t tekkin it so and that they may have forced a review of the list as announced by APNU.
APNU of course was bound to run into trouble with the selection of MP’s. After all, apart from satisfying what would understandably have been a demand by the PNCR for a disproportionate number of available seats, the selection would have had to take account of the entire grand coalition, put together to create an appearance of national unity which many feel was more apparent than real. The truth is that for some of the micro-political parties that formed part of APNU, the whole thing was really a free ride since, frankly, most of them brought nothing to the table. If the general feeling has been that the WPA’s Rupert Roopnaraine earned his seat, questions have arisen about other names that have already been dismissed as political non-entities. Norton, his supporters say, is head and shoulders above the fly-by-night politicians who appear set to occupy some of the APNU benches in Parliament and in the same way that APNU called for a Statement of Poll verification, we now have the former General Secretary’s supporters calling for a review of APNU’s list of proposed parliamentarians.
Mind you, rumour has it that Norton’s real problem is that his name has been met with some measure of resistance from the PNCR’s Leader who, though not going to Parliament himself is widely believed to be exerting a whole lot of influence over who goes and who does not.
Of course, no one expects that APNU will turn up in the National Assembly without some measure of fanfare. A final demonstration perhaps? A massive march from the Square of the Revolution to the National Assembly that will terminate with a swan song speech from Robert Corbin during which he will announce that he is bowing out as Party Leader? Anything is possible in this topsy-turvy political climate of ours.
Anyway, APNU cannot avoid the National Assembly forever and sooner or later it will have to troop into the Parliament Chambers leaving those disappointed aspirants frothing at the mouth and working like hell with the Alliance For Change to make that one-seat majority count.
