Opposition parties APNU and AFC are still deadlocked over who should be the Speaker of the National Assembly, while the government yesterday voiced its concern over the ongoing negotiations between the two parties outside of the agreed tripartite engagement.
APNU Chairman David Granger met yesterday morning with AFC Chairman Khemraj Ramjattan to continue talks.
Afterward, Ramjattan told Stabroek News “we are still in gridlock,” when asked about the status of the negotiations for the parliamentary post. He said, “We maintained that [Moses] Nagamootoo is best suited and is our choice for Speaker and we will not move from that.” He confirmed that the situation prior to the meeting remained the same by the end of the meeting.
“We will work further with APNU because the PPP/C wants Ralph Ramkarran,” he said. Ramjattan added that he did not know of any other meeting fixed to discuss the matter of Speaker of the National Assembly.
While Ramjattan was reluctant to disclose where the meeting was kept, he said it took place at a “convenient location” to both parties.
Granger had said that the coalition has put forward two nominees in Deborah Backer and Bishwaishwar ‘Cammie’ Ramsaroop for the post and would stick by them. He also said that the negotiations between APNU and the AFC were ongoing and added that the parties hoped to settle the issue soon. APNU, he noted, is committed to reaching consensus on the matter with the AFC and he ruled out seeking the support of the PPP/C on the matter. AFC has also ruled out seeking support from the PPP/C on the post.
Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon, however, yesterday told a post-Cabinet news briefing that the governing party is also peeved at the fact that APNU and AFC are meeting unknown to the PPP/C, thereby making a mockery of the tripartite engagement.
“The governing party notes that APNU and AFC are meeting together independent of the tripartite agreement to address issues submitted on their list. This makes the process of this initiative questionable from the onset. The governing party publicly voiced its concern since the actions of the two parties seem inconsistent with the creation of the tripartite inactive,” he said.
The government-opposition engagements were tentatively due to continue yesterday, but Luncheon blamed “inconsistencies” and delays in submission of lists of priorities by APNU and AFC for delaying the planned tripartite meeting until 2012. “This eventuality has arisen since priorities and the matters on the list were belated,” he said.
Vice-Chairman of APNU Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine said yesterday that a meeting of the leadership of the APNU on Thursday afternoon, which saw issues for the next engagement with the government being discussed, ended well. And Dr. Roopnaraine took umbrage to Luncheon’s statements on the reasons for the delay of the planned government opposition meeting, while maintaining that APNU submitted its list last week Wednesday and he rejected the suggestion that it failed to do so. He said that APNU received the PPP’s list last week Tuesday and the next day, APNU sent its list to the PPP/C.
“We are concerned that Dr. Luncheon would say this. It is a complete falsification to suggest that APNU had not sent its list,” he noted, while adding that the process will not be helped by such statements, which he described as an attempt at scoring political points.
Ramjattan also stated that the AFC sent its list to Dr. Luncheon since Friday December 23, 2011. He said too that Dr. Luncheon acknowledged receipt of the email which contained the list and therefore he expressed surprise at his statements yesterday.
Meanwhile, Dr. Roopnaraine said that APNU would be ready on Tuesday to announce the findings of its verification of the Statements of Poll. It has been about three weeks since the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) distributed the SOPs in electronic format to the parties that contested the elections. For the past two weeks APNU kept saying that they would have made the findings of its verification known and since then the party has been putting off the announcement of their findings citing various reasons. (Additional reporting by Marcelle Thomas)
