The Donald Ramotar administration will not call early general elections to pre-empt the no-confidence motion against it when the National Assembly comes out of its recess next month.
“We need to dispense with this notion that this administration, to counter the no-confidence motion, would seek to introduce some snap elections. It will not happen,” Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon said yesterday.
According to Luncheon, while there has been much public speculation that government would seek to bypass the
outcome of the no-confidence motion moved by the AFC, the administration wants to set the record straight.
“I’m saying you can forget that,” he stated. “This administration does not propose to engage in such a futile course of action,” he added,
“We are summons to a trial by the parliamentary opposition, addressing charges that lead to a question of loss of confidence, and I don’t believe when you are summoned to a trial of that sort you can say you ain’t turning up—you don’t have a choice—and we will be there to defend the track record of this administration,” Luncheon further added.
If the AFC’s motion is supported by members of main opposition APNU on a vote, the government would be forced to resign and general elections would have to be held within 90 days.
Ramotar previously said that he would call snap elections only if the situation demanded it. “If we have to do that, we will do it, if it is needed to be done,” he had said at a recent press conference.
However, he said that the holding of general elections was pricey and as a consequence he would prefer to wait until the end of his five-year term for new elections. “Elections are an expensive thing too, you know. So let’s try to save the Guyanese people some money and go as long as we can, to the term if possible,” he said.
‘To have their cake and eat it’
Meanwhile, Luncheon also said that government was still waiting on a response from Opposition Leader David Granger on an inquiry that was made about the ultimatum he had issued a week ago for a date to be named for the holding of local government elections.
Last Tuesday, Granger, by way of a letter, called on Ramotar to name a date by Monday for long-postponed local government elections to be held otherwise national and international support would be galvanised in defence of democracy.
The polls, last held in 1994, have been due since 1997 and the PPP/C government has been faced with renewed calls for them to be held and criticisms for its failure to do so.
Ramotar subsequently wrote to Granger seeking clarification, stating that the position represented on local government elections and the positions subsequently expressed by APNU in respect of supporting the no-confidence motion were ambiguous and contradictory. “In the circumstances, before I can properly respond to your letter, I wish for you to clarify what precisely is your party’s position,” Ramotar wrote.
The administration has suggested that Granger’s call for local government elections conflicts with the planned no-confidence motion that would lead to early general elections if passed.
Granger has said that there is no contradiction between the two and told Stabroek News that he did not respond to that letter because there is nothing to clarify.
Meanwhile, even though Granger’s ultimatum expired since Monday, there has been no word on what the APNU’s next move is likely to be, or when.
Stabroek News understands that up to yesterday members of the APNU executive were still meeting to discuss the way forward. This publication was told that the discussion with the APNU leadership council was “a work in progress” and that Granger would need the full support of the members comprising the coalition party before proceeding.
“APNU intends to have their cake and eat it,” Luncheon, however, suggested yesterday, while noting that it would not be feasible to run both general and local government elections simultaneously.
He said that while APNU intensifies calls for local government elections, there was still the issue of the no-confidence motion, the passage of which in favour of the opposition seems “inevitable.”
He said that he does not believe that the opposition, with its combined majority in the House, would back down from the no-confidence motion and ask for the debate on it to be pushed back.
“Will someone from the opposition get up and ask for it to be deferred? Who is going to take the flack in the opposition for raising the tenor and suggesting to the public and then saying, ‘We ain’t want go down that road no more?’ You think you have people in the opposition with that kind of balls?” he asked.
