APNU powerless to recall defecting Councillors – Mahipaul admits

A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) executive member, Ganesh Mahipaul, on Friday, admitted that the party has no legal recourse to recall the regional Councillors who recently defected from the party and publicly joined the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C).
Speaking during the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) weekly press conference on Friday, Mahipaul faced questions about what the party plans to do about the conundrum it finds itself in over the four regional Councillors that were appointed by the party but no longer support the party.
Earlier this month, APNU Regional Councillors Ravoldo Birbal, Sheikh Yaseen, Prince Holder and Gangadai Lloyd were part of a seven-member exodus from the PNCR and its coalition party, APNU. Holder is APNU’s singular Councillor for Region Two, while Lloyd is one of four APNU Councillors in Region Three, and Birbal and Yaseen are Councillors in Region Four, where APNU has nine seats.
Mahipaul explained that while in the case of a Member of Parliament (MP) there are provisions for the appointed members to be recalled by the representative of the list, in the case of regional Councillors the party is powerless in doing anything about the situation. According to Mahipaul, all the party can do is ask the defected Councillors to resign and then hope they do so voluntarily.
“There is recall legislation for Parliamentarians… (but) when it comes to the regional Councillors, there is no recall legislation, so we cannot move to recall them. And we did express in the public space that we expect them to resign. You can’t say that you are removing yourself from a political party and expressing interest to go to a political party, and you’re sitting on the strength of the political party that you left,” Mahipaul said.
“You cannot hold onto the seat and say you’re serving people, and the people who put you there, so to speak, are people who are not aligning with the political direction that you want to move with. There is no law that speaks to removing them, so we cannot do anything legally in my humble view.”
Mahipaul confirmed that thus far none of the Councillors has taken up the party’s request to resign.
The exit of the sitting Councillors was a major blow to the PNCR ahead of the Local Government Elections (LGE), which are expected to be held later this year.
The recent seven-member exodus from the PNCR and its coalition included former APNU MPs Rickly Ramsaroop, Shurwayne Holder, and Dinesh Jaiprashad. Regional Councillors, Ravoldo Birbal, Sheikh Yaseen, Prince Holder, and Gangadai Lloyd.
This latest exodus from the PNCR party is part of a sustained year-on-year brain drain from the PNCR that has taken place since the party came under the leadership of current leader Aubrey Norton. Holder’s exit was accompanied by the departure of APNU City Councillor Robert Maison and preceded by the departure of PNCR Executive Mervyn Williams, who strikingly made his resignation announcement during a live airing of the party’s weekly programme “Nation Watch”, which he hosted for a number of years.
The thinning of the herd has included the resignation of many long-standing stalwarts, including former general secretary the late Amna Ally, who resigned in 2025 shortly before her death.
Many criticised Norton for not attending Ally’s funeral.
Former Georgetown Mayor Patricia Chase Green and City Councillor Trichria Richards resigned in 2023 ahead of the local government elections that year. They both debut as members of the PPPC. Longstanding party member Ronald Backer and party treasurer Fiaaz Mursaline resigned in 2022.
Youth activists Thandi McAllister and Brian Smith resigned in 2021. Former General Secretaries Geeta Chandan-Edmond and Dawn Hastings-Williams resigned those positions in 2022 and 2024, respectively.
Longstanding party member Ronald Backer and party treasurer Fiaaz Mursaline resigned in 2022.
Region 10 Executives, and former Parliamentarians Jermaine Figueira and Vanessa Kissoon, both also resigned in 2025, as did former Executives and Parliamentarians James Bond, Amanza Walton-Desir, and Natasha Singh Lewis.
Former Region Four Regional Chairman Daniel Seeram and Vice-Chairman Samuel Sandy also resigned in 2025, when they both endorsed the PPPC.
McAllister, Chandan-Edmond, Figueira, and Bond have all also crossed the floor and joined the PPPC. Hastings-Williams and Natasha Singh-Lewis have joined the United States-sanctioned and indicated Azruddin Mohamed’s We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) party, which won 16 seats in Parliament in the September 1 elections, and Walton-Desir has formed her own party, the Forward Guyana Movement (FGM), which won a single seat at the GRE.