Leader of the Opposition Aubrey Norton said that President Irfaan Ali appeared “out of the blue” and bullied him into a handshake at the British High Commission’s birthday reception for Queen Elizabeth last Thursday.
Norton added that he deliberately refused to shake the President’s hand as a form of protest over the government’s management of the country.
President Ali and Norton were at the residence of the British High Commissioner to Guyana Jane Miller when the encounter occurred. Urging Norton, who initially snubbed the request for a handshake to put aside their differences, Ali said that as mature adults there should be no place for “pettiness”.
“He did not want to shake my hand but I have no place for pettiness. This is a social forum… so I told him ‘Shake my hand. We are mature people,” Ali had told Stabroek News afterwards.
Ali made the rounds and interacted with persons and also took photos at the function. Norton was selective in his choice of interactions, while other members of the opposition, including APNU+AFC members Khemraj Ramjattan, David Patterson and Roysdale Forde shook hands and chatted with Ali along with government ministers and parliamentarians.
Yesterday, at a press conference, Norton was asked about the encounter and he said that he was chatting with someone when the President appeared in his space.
“…the President turned up with a set of cameras … I wasn’t even looking in his direction. He turned to me and apparently had his hand outstretched and he turned to me and asked me if I don’t want to shake his hand and I said no. He then proceeded to, what I consider to be bullyism and we ended up shaking hands, but I want to make it clear that first of all, I cannot treat this as business as usual,” Norton told reporters.
Norton explained that he initially refused to shake the President’s hand because of the acts of discrimination by the government. He argued that the government continues to sack persons it perceives to be aligned with the APNU+AFC as well as discriminate against citizens when distributing aid.
“I am not going to allow the President to use a handshake for propaganda purposes. If I am shaking the President’s hands it is assumed that there is some amount of cordiality and that the people of Guyana are been served in a nonpartisan way. And so for me, it wasn’t a question of just a handshake. It was an attempt by the People’s Progressive Party president to get a handshake and to show it all around the globe as if everything is fine in Guyana between the government and the opposition and between the political parties. I signal clearly that it cannot be business as usual,” he said.
Norton added “You cannot do the things you are doing to the people of Guyana and expect me to operate as if all is well. It isn’t well. We have a government that is disrespectful…I am not prepared to be used to appear that all is well when all of us know that isn’t well…the cost of living is going up and no proper measures are taken to deal with it, it cannot be business as usual, and my refusal to shake the hands of the President might not be conventional, but it is relevant to illustrate the reality of what the Guyanese people are facing.”
This is the second awkward encounter Norton has had, since taking up the Leader of the Opposition post, with the Ali government. In May at a Europe Day reception which was hosted by the European Union at Georgetown Club, Camp Street, Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo and Norton were engaged in a heated discussion over the 2020 General and Regional elections, the controversial Statements of Poll and corruption.
