Justice For All Party (JFAP) representative in the APNU+AFC coalition government, Jaipaul Sharma, says that he is willing to “sacrifice” his position in the alliance to facilitate a renewing of the Cummingsburg Accord.
“I am prepared to give up my position as a possible Member of Parliament and Minister of Government after the 2020 General & Regional Elections in the interest of all Guyanese as I see it as the greatest service and sacrifice that I can give for the greater good of Guyana,” Sharma, the junior Minister of Public Infrastructure, wrote in a post on his Facebook page yesterday.
“I am convinced that WE MUST GO INTO THE GENERAL & REGIONAL ELECTIONS AS A UNIFIED COALITION BECAUSE: WE ARE BETTER TOGETHER. WE ARE STRONGER TOGETHER. This is a tough time in politics and the tough must get going to make the tough decisions necessary to win,” he added.
Stabroek News made several attempts to contact Sharma yesterday for further clarification of his comments but the efforts were futile.
Sharma’s comments appeared to be a response to the AFC saying on Friday that the party is prepared to campaign alone if a new accord is not agreed by today. The coalition partners will today meet for discussions on renewing their electoral pact but while the AFC has said that today will be the last meeting between the two current electoral allies, President David Granger has said that he hopes by December 1st, an agreement could be reached.
The AFC has also said that it will launch its elections campaign on November 23rd, with or without APNU. “This deadline can no longer be extended,” the junior coalition partner had said in a statement on Friday.
“AFC is ready. We desire a partnership with the APNU. It is the preferred way to go in these elections but we are battle ready and with or without our partners, we are ready to go and all of our plans are in place,” the party’s Deputy General Secretary Leonard Craig had said.
The same day, APNU’s chief negotiator Volda Lawrence told a press conference that her party believes “We will able to conclude all negotiations and all our agenda items by the end of this year as we are working towards.”
The AFC, which had declared the negotiations stalled last month, in a statement, explained that discussions between the parties resumed after October 24th, with several productive high-level meetings between the leaders of the AFC and APNU, as well as between the two negotiating teams.
President David Granger and AFC Leader Khemraj Ramjattan – who was selected to be the party’s prime ministerial candidate in the coalition for the elections – had met following this suspension of talks and apparently reached a compromise. Sources had told this newspaper that part of that compromise was a commitment from the AFC that its prime ministerial candidate would not rise to the presidency.
The AFC had indicated several deadlines over the past week for the talks on a new electoral pact to wrap up: November 10th, 14th and today.
The party’s statement on Friday said that a single outstanding matter is to be resolved at today’s meeting with all other terms of the accord being provisionally agreed.
Craig had said that the outstanding issue is “a formula for the awarding of ministerial positions and seats on the Regional Democratic Councils.”