A scheduled meeting between the two members of the ruling coalition to review the Cummingsburg Accord did not happen but the two sides have exchanged documents.
According to a press statement yesterday from A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) they and the Alliance for Change (AFC) will meet at a date to be fixed after consideration of the documents by their respective leadership.
The two parties had agreed earlier this month to revise the document as part of preparations for the upcoming General and Regional Elections (GRE).
The process which is expected to be completed within four weeks will be concluded by teams including the General Secretary of each party.
The AFC is led by the General Secretary David Patterson and includes National Executive members Dominic Gaskin and Dr. Vincent Adams. The APNU team is led by their General Secretary Joseph Harmon.
Attempt to reach both General Secretaries proved futile while AFC Chairman Khemraj Ramjattan told Stabroek News that his party will issue a press statement on the issue at a later time.
The AFC’s February 14, 2015 accord with APNU was seen as the key factor in the defeat of the PPP/C at the May, 2015 general elections. However, political analysts say that the hardliners within APNU – particularly its main component – the PNCR felt that AFC had gotten disproportionately high benefits from the Accord and that this had to be reeled in.
The key features of the Accord were that the AFC would have the prime ministerial position in the government and 12 seats in Parliament. The AFC had also been unhappy with the allocation of seats to it at the historic 2016 local government elections and had pressed at various points for an adjustment in this area. Matters came to a head at the 2018 local government elections when APNU threw down the gauntlet and had the AFC contest the polls on its own in an apparent bid to have it show its real worth.
It has been posited that the most delicate part of the upcoming talks would be a strong view in some parts of APNU and the PNCR that the AFC should not retain the right to name a prime ministerial candidate given its showing at the 2018 local government elections and the view that the PPP/C has clawed back the support that the AFC had brought to the coalition in 2015. The number of seats in Parliament assigned to the AFC is also likely to be an issue on the table.
