The People’s National Congress Reform has unveiled its 15-member Central Executive Commit-tee (CEC) with women comprising sixty percent and there are three new faces.
With its Congress ending last Sunday, where the CEC members were elected, the party yesterday released the results of those polls.
The fifteen are Annette Ferguson, Christopher Jones , Winston Felix, Amna Ally, James Bond, Lurlene Nestor, Larry London, Carol Smith-Joseph, Patricia Chase-Green, Hazel Pinder, Mortimer Mingo, Clement Corlette, Jennifer Ferreira-Dougal, Genevieve Allen and Cheryl Sampson.
Nestor, London and Ferreira-Dougal are newly elected, Party General Secretary Oscar Clarke said yesterday.
The party had said in a statement that 55 persons contested for the positions.
President David Granger was unchallenged as Leader of the party and so was Attorney-General Basil Williams and Minister of Communities Ronald Bulkan for their positions as Party Chairman and Treasurer respectively. Minister of Health Dr George Norton and Volda Lawrence were voted back in as Vice Chairmen.
Current Ministers of government who are members of the central executive are Ferguson, who is the Junior Minister of Public Infrastructure, veteran politician Ally who is the Minis-ter of Social Cohesion and Minister of Citizenship, Felix.
Some of the persons are also Advisors and Honorary Advisors to the APNU+AFC government.
They are Sampson, Ministerial advisor on education, London, Nestor and Dougal.
Jones is the current Director of Youth and Sports while Allen is Region 4’s Regional Chair-woman whose predecessor was Corlette. Former Region 10 Regional Chairman Mingo was also elected.
Region Five Councillor Smith-Joseph, who had been accused of stymieing the business of the region by her disruptive behaviour during council meetings was also elected to the CEC.
Treasurer of the women’s arm of the party, Pinder retained her position on the Central Executive and so did Mayor of George-town, Chase-Green.
Attorney at Law Bond, who had also contested for one of the two Vice Chairman posts and lost was also re-elected to the CEC. He had told Stabroek News that for him it was never a competition but a chance to be a voice for youths in the party. He was happy with his performance given that the party’s youth arm only had 70 delegates present at the congress.
“I think a casual observer would look and see the dynamics are changing. People were saying that the young people did not have sufficient representation within the party yet still (we) were able to garner 148 votes. I think we did extremely well. We did better than many expected and I think we set the platform. The whole idea was to position young people forward. We didn’t have a platform but now we can say we have a platform. We didn’t have enough delegates. I think GYSM (Guyana Youth and Student Movement – the party’s youth arm) had 70 delegates which is not good and which we intend to work on,” Bond declared.
“Now we were able to impress the general membership of the Biennial congress and I think they repose great interest in us. We pitched our ideas for Vision 20/20 and they bought into it and they sent a strong message that we are willing to work with the young people.
“We are willing to see young people represent our party at the highest level. I never saw myself as running against anyone or competing against anyone…I was just putting myself out there for service…We feel that if we get more of the young voters on aboard with the PNCR, we will have a greater say,” he added.
And while he had downplayed his role on the Central Executive, he told this newspaper that he has to continue “field work” to bring awareness to youth of the integral role they play in the country’s politics.
“The work is not Central Exec for me right now. The work is in the fields so my focus-after seeing what the delegates did, after seeing the work we have to do- it’s not on Central Executive…it’s on the work out there,” he said.
