The governing A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) coalition has not yet officially announced a release date for it 2020 Manifesto but Prime Ministerial Candidate Khemraj Ramjattan has assured that it is likely to be published in early February.
“The Manifesto committee is working….I have an idea that it [the release] will be early February but not a specific date,” he said when contacted by Stabroek News. He directed this newspaper to joint campaign managers Raphael Trotman and Joseph Harmon for more information but repeated attempts to reach both men have so far failed.
So far President David Granger has been campaigning on the strength of his promised “decade of development”.
He has promised within this decade, the achievement of a higher quality of life through the use of oil revenues to accelerate the country’s four transformative processes – the ‘green state’, the ‘digital state’, the ‘petroleum state’ and an education nation. “We have a plan. We are building back the economy. We are protecting the environment. We have a plan…we are ensuring every child is in school…Guyanese will never be poor again,” he told the crowd at D’Urban Park during his campaign launch.
So far the only clear promise is constitutional reform which is likely to remove or alter the No Confidence provision currently enshrined in the constitution.
According to Granger, in its second term the coalition will ensure that “that nonsense they tried to do to us over the last 12 months doesn’t happen again.”
In December 2018, a no-confidence motion against the APNU+AFC government was passed in the National Assembly after then government parliamentarian Charrandass Persaud voted with the opposition People’s Progressive Party/Civic. The passage of the motion triggered articles 106(6) and 106(7) of the Constitution, which mandates that elections be held within three months but this was delayed by a series of legal challenges initiated by government.
Constitutional reform has been a consistent promise of various governments but once in office, they have not moved on these promises. Since 2015, constitutional reform has been under the purview of Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo but little progress has been recorded.
