Based on its overall performance at the 2023 Local Government Elections (LGE), the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) is not ruling out the possibility of another coalition to increase its chances at the upcoming General and Regional Elections. In fact, Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton said he still believes in the power of a united front. Be that as it may, he will not “beg” for it to happen.
During a press conference yesterday Norton said, “We will work assiduously to have a coalition. One of the positives of coalition politics is that it allows you to have people outside of your thinking. And so there is a cross mix of your ideas… This allows you to produce much better quality information etc… one of the things I can guarantee you though is that we are not going to beg.”
Norton was at the time responding to a question from Guyana Standard about the lessons learned during the party’s LGE campaign. He noted that while the party is not surprised about the low voter turnout, it was heartening to note that the support of the party in key strongholds still remain intact.
“There are many things I learned being Opposition Leader and that is there was a change in what we did in the past. A lot of times before the election (most of the focus was on leaders in) Georgetown. Now, we have decided to put trust in the leaders of these other districts and they ran extremely good elections,” Norton said.
He continued, “We learned through this change that there is value in allowing people in their locality to run. This helps to develop their leadership. Of course there were negative consequences and we have to rectify those.”
He noted that despite the party’s inability to contest in all of the local government authorities, its focus in key districts paid off, as intense groundwork took place in areas where many of its supporters were engaged.
Norton said that the administration’s attempt to “bribe” the voting population failed “miserably” in several local authorities. He said the unofficial polls have shown the government that “Guyanese cannot be bought.”
Norton concluded that for the upcoming General and Regional Elections slated for 2025, the party is expected to outshine it’s competition by adopting a strategy which he refused to make public.
