The recount winds down amidst the 40th Anniversary of the assassination of Walter Rodney, one of Guyana’s most prominent and courageous fighters for democracy and free and fair elections. The party, of which he was a leader, the WPA, now in alliance with APNU, together with the PPP, proposed separate policies in the late 1970s for shared governance. The WPA’s proposal was called “Government of National Unity and Reconstruction,” the PPP’s, a “National Patriotic Front Government.” There were formal discussions between the two parties, chaired by the neutral Ashton Chase, at the CCWU’s headquarters, seeking mutual support for each other’s proposals. There was no immediate agreement but the WPA’s subsequent adjustment to include the PNC in its Government of National Unity and Reconstruction, created an alignment of the two positions on two important issues for a political solution, namely: 1. Free and fair elections; and 2. Inclusion of the PNC in a unity government.
