The People’s National Congress (PNC), Alliance For Change (AFC) and Working People’s Alliance (WPA) recently announced that they will be meeting to discuss the establishment of a coalition for the purpose of contesting the upcoming regional and general elections to be held by November this year. Only recently, these parties were part of the coalition, APNU+AFC, (the WPA was part of APNU), which won the elections by one seat in 2015. The APNU+AFC coalition was built around the Cummingsburg Accord which was signed by APNU and AFC on February 14, 2015. Its primary objective was the distribution of ministries and parliamentary seats among the parties in the event that APNU+AFC won the elections. APNU+AFC felt confident at the outcome of the elections at the time because, with the AFC, it held a one seat majority in the National Assembly over the PPP/C minority Government. In order to be able to form the government the APNU and AFC were forced into the coalition because the constitution did not allow a post-election coalition with a majority of seats to form the government.
Governmental coalitions have never been successful in Guyana, starting with the PNC and the United Force (UF) in 1964. The coalition between the PNC and UF lasted for only four years. Some of the UF’s members were later absorbed by the PNC and it eventually faded as a political force. The PPP established an unusual coalition in 1992, namely, a coalition with Civic members who had aligned themselves with the PPP in the campaign for free and fair elections leading up to 1992. The Civic was not an organized group and the PPP opposed it having a formal structure for fear that it might become a powerful pressure group. After 1997 the Civic group dwindled, lost many of its prominent members and plays no structured role in the PPP today. APNU+AFC was the third and final governmental coalition. After the APNU+AFC lost the elections in 2020, the coalition was brought to an end.