Five months after PPP General Secretary Clement Rohee first announced that the party was meeting various stakeholders to gauge the interest in a possible ‘National Democratic Front’ (NDF) alliance, the process has stalled.
At the party’s weekly press briefing at Freedom House yesterday, Rohee could shed no light on the current process. When asked how many stakeholders, including groups and individuals, have been engaged he simply stated “a lot.”
Stabroek News pressed the general secretary on who the stakeholders were, but all Rohee would say was that the party was doing its work and he was unable to divulge that information at this time.
Rohee stated that the party has met a large number of interested stakeholders at various social events, inclusive of dinners. He said there has been a very public vetting of these engagements, but would not be drawn on where the meetings or social gatherings have taken place.
He said the process was not necessarily to introduce interested parties to “hard politics” but to encourage leaders of the party to meet groups and individuals who could comprise the civic component of the party.
When the PPP first drummed up the idea of a NDF alliance in August last year, it was criticised for tossing the notion into the public as a precursor to election campaigning.
One of the many criticisms faced by the party was that such an alliance lacked foresight as possible revitalisation of the civic component and instead was based solely on a probable coalition of the opposition parties.
In September of last year when Rohee was pressed on the subject he said the PPP had not yet reached a stage where it was open to discussion with the opposition parties. He had stated that speaking to organisations that are not intrinsically political in nature was a slow process and that an alliance could not be forced.
The party has remained incredibly silent on its election campaign strategy and manifesto and is yet to publicly state who its prime ministerial candidate will be. Rohee told media operatives yesterday that he could neither confirm nor deny that Samuel Hinds will return in that position.
