Since Aubrey Norton’s ascension to Leadership of the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR), calls continue to mount that he should replace Joseph Harmon, the current Leader of the Opposition (LOO). The PNCR is the largest support base party in the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) camp. Norton won a landslide victory at the last PNCR Biennial Congress held in December 2021, defeating Richard Van West-Charles and Harmon.
It is the PNCR’s Central Executive Committee (CEC)’s desire that the LOO and the PNCR Leader be one and the same. Subsequent to that disclosure, the APNU issued a statement noting that no one party in the partnership can make such decisions, noting that there are systems within the bloc that cater for the resolution of such matters. But Working People’s Alliance (WPA) Member Dr David Hinds shares a differing opinion. The WPA served alongside the PNCR in the APNU up to 2020, when it departed the partnership, citing concerns of the WPA being sidelined. The Justice for All Party (JFAP), founded by C.N. Sharma and wife, Savitri Singh, also left the APNU, leaving their son and former Minister, Jaipaul Sharma, who has now founded his own party, Equal Rights and Justice Party (ERJP) and has joined forces with the APNU.
Since the WPA’s departure, Dr Hinds said that the APNU “exists only in name” and rubbished claims by APNU that the PNCR should not be making such assertions without consultations with other member parties.
Dr Hinds noted that it is the PNCR that traditionally makes appointments in the APNU. When the WPA was part of the partnership, he said that the PNCR would, with little to no consultation, decide who will fill positions whether in government or in opposition. A majority of those posts, he added, would go to the PNCR, and even those that went to the smaller parties would be decided upon by the PNCR leadership following the APNU brokering a team up with the Alliance for Change (AFC). He said that former WPA Member, Tabitha Sarabo-Halley, who has now formed her own party, Guyana Nation Builders Movement (GNBM) and joined the APNU, was handpicked by former President, the then-PNCR Leader and ex-LOO, David Granger.
He reiterated that when it came to making appointment decisions, APNU member parties would never “sit around a table and do an election”.
“The PNC decided…So, the logic is: Mr Granger held the position of Leader of the APNU as Representative of the APNU+AFC List, because he was the Leader of the PNC. Now that he is no longer the PNC Leader, the logic is: the PNC has the right to name somebody else in that position (APNU Leader) and the PNC, it seems to me, will have to decide whether it will name Mr Harmon or Mr Norton or whomever else…That is the PNC’s business. It was so then, and I don’t understand why people saying it should not be so now,” he said.
Dr Hinds said that if the impasses persist around who should lead, Norton’s ‘faction’ can go the legal way and file a vote of no confidence against Harmon.
“But that’s a last resort, that’s last option because the issue is not legal, the issue is not constitutional…Yes, the office is Constitutional but how the person got to the office is a political decision and that decision lies with the PNC. The statement by the APNU is an erroneous statement. The APNU is a non-working organisation,” he noted.
Hinds added that during the impasse between March to August 2020, the APNU “probably” had one meeting with other APNU members, to which the WPA was reported.
“We were not part of the decisions in the five months. The WPA walked after the elections were over in August and for all intents and purposes, the APNU died, because the two functioning parties were the PNC and the WPA. The WPA walked and the thing died. So, for somebody to write a press release, talking about APNU rules and all that kind of stuff, is nonsense. The APNU exists in name only, and so the issue before us is not an APNU issue, the issue before us is a PNC issue and the PNC has to solve it,” he reaffirmed.
