Clement Rohee – General Secretary of the People’s Progressive Party and Minister of Home Affairs – informed the nation at a press conference at Freedom House, 2nd June, 2014, reportedly (Guyana Chronicle 3rd June, 2014) that the country was not in a “mood” for local government elections.
Rohee said: “This is a question of timing, judgment call and what the mood is. The party may be ready, as a party, including its machinery, but that doesn’t mean that we are an electioneering party. You have to take timing, the mood of the people and, at the end of the day, it’s a judgment call and these are censures which politicians are attuned to before making such a call….”
Norman Whittaker, Minister of Local Government and Regional Development, three months earlier in an interview (Stabroek News, 7th March, 2014) said that “The vast majority of the populace is not prepared for the holding of local government polls by August 1st.” He added, “…to go ahead would result in the waste of a lot of money”. Moreover, according to Stabroek News, the Minister assumed that “if elections were to be held now, only about 30 per cent of the population would respond. The minister said that “Guyanese typically do not attach much significance to elections, even at the