The Alliance For Change (AFC) will ask prospective electoral partners to back its likely presidential candidate Khemraj Ramjattan, after his selection is ratified at its upcoming special delegates’ conference.
AFC leader Raphael Trotman told Stabroek News that the party has started engaging several groups, including other political parties, religious organisations and members of the business community towards forming a partnership to contest next year’s general election. “I can’t say we are at a stage where things are all certain and in place, it will be premature,” he explained, “[but] the landscape is changing by the day and we are encouraged by the feedback we are getting.”
Trotman added that the party never intended to set a deadline to formalise partnerships. He explained that while the AFC has to attend to its own conference, many other parties and groups are still finding themselves, which could yield demands. He said it is anticipated that some issues can be negotiated, while others would be non-negotiable, like the party’s core-principles. He also noted the identification of Ramjattan as the party’s candidate. “We would most likely be putting Mister Ramjattan up as presidential candidate [and] we would expect that if others are on board they would want to accept him,” he said. “I don’t sense that within the AFC there is any disappointment or confusion, as in, ‘we are not where we thought we would be.’ We obviously would have liked to conclude an agreement but in the nature of politics in Guyana, that would have been a little idealistic, to assume that we would have had everything nailed down,” he added.
According to Trotman, timetabling nomination day could be “the crucible” that forces groups to come together, and he pointed out that Patrick Manning’s calling of early elections in Trinidad forced persons “to come together” after they had been looking at each other. “I don’t feel apprehensive or worried. I’d be very worried if we were not in any engagement,” he said.
He noted that one of the common threads of the party’s engagement with various groups has been constitutional reform. In particular, he said people want to see the back of the executive presidency or at least the manner in which it functions. He said the groups were starting to identify the basic or critical strands of how they can come together on a like minded platform and he emphasised the need for a spirit of patriotism. He said it was his personal hope to see the issue wrapped by next March, adding that the party should know its “principal partners” by that time.
Trotman explained that the AFC conference, scheduled for month end, would seek to ratify the decision of the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) to recommend that Ramjattan become its presidential candidate. The NEC is also expected to recommend that Trotman become the prime ministerial candidate, along with any other person who has been properly nominated in keeping with the party’s constitution. The party has also stated that in order to give effect to the decision, Trotman would endorse Ramjattan as the presidential candidate and Ramjattan would endorse Trotman as the prime ministerial candidate.
The party’s constitution states that the NEC’s decision must be ratified by a delegates’ conference, although any of the party’s group could offer a member as a nominee for presidential candidate. Trotman said while the ratification of Ramjattan’s candidacy is not automatic, he did not believe it would prove divisive. “I don’t see it as something that is going to be overly contentious,” he explained. “We have seen one other person in the form of [Michael] Carrington, who has argued that for the further entrenching of democracy within the party, we should try to avoid this kind of unilateral and one person arrangement, such as we see playing out with the PPP,” he said.
The AFC has said it would neither ally itself with the ruling PPP/C nor the PNCR, in what has been seen as a clear rejection of the main opposition party. Since the announcement, the PNCR along with GAP, WPA and the NFA have said they have decided to pursue a broad partnership. Asked whether the conference would revisit the decision, Trotman explained that there would likely be discussions on it, noting that the delegates’ conference is the highest decision-making forum in the party. He added that there has been no indication of any “blatant disagreement” with the decision but added that no discussion of the issue was going to be shut out. “In politics, we never say no. Ultimately, it is for the people or delegates to decide,” he said.
The conference, which will commemorate the party’s fifth anniversary, will also look at the party’s plan for next year, including its electoral campaign.
