No regrets on toppling APNU/AFC Govt – Charrandass Persaud

…says coalition must apologise for lying to Guyanese

Former A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) Member of Parliament Charrandas Persaud has said that he has no regrets about supporting the No-Confidence Motion on December 21, 2018, which resulted in the toppling of the then David Granger-led coalition Government.
Persaud, who returned to Guyana a few days ago, after being in “self-exile” for 22 months in Canada, expressed that knowing what he knows now, he is convinced that he made the right decision.
“If I have to do it again, instead of three yeses, they’ll get six,” Persaud said during an interview with Kaieteur Radio.
Insisting that all he did was to “remove the corruption that I saw” the former MP highlighted that the APNU/AFC did not pay attention to the fact that they caused thousands of people to lose their jobs “and live in poverty and literally hand to mouth”.
Persaud, a lawyer by profession, also weighed into the birth certificate scandal, which came to light during the recent budget debates.
During the 2020 budget debates, Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance, Gail Teixeira revealed that a major supporter of the APNU/AFC was strangely awarded a multimillion-dollar contract under questionable circumstances to print thousands of birth certificates.
“They wanted house-to-house registration and a new list because they had to add these people to the voters’ list…and that was stopped dead in its tracks with the NCM,” Persaud outlined.
The former MP recalled that he joined the AFC because he thought that he could have played a role in helping to develop the country and more particularly bridge the racial divide. This, he said, “did not happen because all we did as AFC; and that’s why now they are so dismantled, they are so disorganised…they don’t know what to do because they have been shortchanged by the PNC”.
Turning his attention to the five-month protracted delay in announcing the results of the March 2 polls, Persaud expressed that Opposition Leader Joseph Harmon and former President Granger should apologise to the nation over their party’s attempts to derail the country’s democracy.
“I even challenged David Granger and Joe Harmon to admit to the people that they were wrong to the people, that they lied, because the Statements of Poll were clear that they lost the elections. The only thing they have to do now is to admit to the people…not just to their own supporters, but to the nation.”
According to Persaud, the APNU/AFC cannot be part of the “social bridging” of Guyana unless they “admit to the lies that they have committed, the lies that caused [the] country to be tortured for at least twenty-two months”.
Meanwhile, Persaud related that while he is happy to be back in Guyana, he is still conscious of the fact that his safety is of paramount importance.
Looking ahead, he said: “I am very happy to be back here, and I want to contribute…I know I can contribute towards the development of not just Guyana, but the lives of people in this country and that was lacking in the Government that I was part of and so I did my best to change it.”
Persaud had sided with the then Opposition PPP/C and voted in favour of a No-Confidence Motion resulting in the six-party coalition Administration being crumbled.
But the APNU/AFC had moved to the courts to challenge the validity of the No-Confidence Motion on the basis of Persaud’s dual citizenship and that 34 votes were needed instead of the 33 in the 65-member National Assembly for the successful passage of the motion.
However, after many months of legal battle, the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), in June 2019, upheld the ruling of Guyana’s High Court that the motion brought against the Granger-led APNU/AFC Administration was validly passed with the votes of 33 members.