President Bharrat Jagdeo says although he and leader of the Opposition Robert Corbin have not met for quite a while he is still hoping they will soon continue the “productive” engagement on a number of issues.
Referring to the recent spate of street protests, Jagdeo, speaking yesterday at a press conference at the Office of the President, said that when sense returns and sanity prevails “we will continue the engagements we had. I thought that they were very productive, not just to solve many problems of a national nature but also it’s good to build a civilised political culture if the president and the leader of the opposition could meet time and again to address the people’s problems.”
He said he hopes “we could continue to build that political culture where although we have differences we could address them in a civilised manner and that we can continue engagements we had.”
He said the engagements were designed to build a better relationship between Government and the PNCR and hopefully to evolve better and more institutionalised ways of working with each other.
Noting the PNCR calls for power sharing at the level of the executive, Jagdeo said that for any arrangement – whatever it is called – to work at the level of the executive it would require trust between the two parties and “we don’t have an atmosphere of trust,” at the moment. “You need to build this. You need a track record of working together building trust between the parties and this may evolve to more formal arrangements. That remains my position,” the President said. “I am hoping that this protest phase will end and the PNCR will return to the table,” he said.
