Split from APNU will not affect AFC at 2025 elections – Ramjattan claims

With the Alliance For Change – the minority party in the coalition Opposition – moving ahead to part ways with the A Partnership for National Unity this year end, party leaders are confident that the split would not affect their performance at the 2025 polls.

This was indicated by AFC Leader Khemraj Ramjattan at a press conference on Friday, where he indicated that the party’s National Conference, its highest decision-making body, has decided to separate from its coalition partner.
“We will still have very cordial working relationship with the APNU because we are a joint party at parliamentary level and even for fighting for the genuine causes and authentic causes, like a clean voters’ list, we certainly gonna work along. I think we’re gonna work along on very many other [issues] but if we have independent positions, we certainly gonna express them,” he stated.
The AFC leader told reporters that while he is yet to formally write his APNU counterpart and Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton on the AFC’s decision to split, Norton is aware of this. He said a formal correspondence will be sent at the appropriate time.
Meanwhile, AFC’s Chair, Cathy Hughes, reminded that the Cummingsburg Accord, which gave birth to the APNU/AFC coalition, was never designed as an agreement for out of Government but for their time in office, which lasted from 2015 to 2020.
“The AFC has always been an independent party and we feel very strongly that we are at a point in which we are going back to our roots. We are going back to highlighting who we are and what we stand for, and sometimes it is the things that don’t necessarily bring you lots of applause but in terms of long-term Guyana, it’s necessary for building a country that can move forward,” she stated.
In addition to confirming its split, the AFC last week also announced that it will not be contesting the upcoming Local Government Elections (LGE) slated for March 13, 2023, citing concerns over the voters’ list which they along with the APNU have been insisting is bloated.
Asked whether these positions will have an impact on its support base at the 2025 General and Region Elections, Ramjattan insisted his party still has relevance.
“We feel that holding onto principled position [of a padded list] is gonna enhance the support base of people in our party and we don’t feel that it’s gonna be anything negative at all [in the 2025 elections],” he contended.
Nevertheless, the AFC leader said on Friday that the decision to not participate in the upcoming Local Government polls is an independent one also taken by the party’s National Executive based on their concerns and not their poor showings at the polls.
At the last LGE in 2018, the AFC, which had contested on its own, ended up securing just four per cent of the total votes cast.
But Ramjattan argued, “…to the extent then that people feel that ‘oh because we aren’t winning any NDC’ (Neighbourhood Democratic Councils) that means that our support base will drop. That is absolute nonsense. We, as a matter of fact, we did a flaking out of a lot of the areas in and around the country and that was what created the spark and that is what is going to get it going and maintain our relevance as a third force in the country… If we have been reduced as so many people have been expressing…, why are they just mentioning all the time the AFC, AFC, AFC; Cathy Hughes, Ramjattan, David Patterson. It’s because we have a relevance and they’re scared.”
While its coalition partner had also been adamant with its claims that the voters’ list is bloated and had hinted at boycotting the Local Government polls, the APNU leader seemed to have backpedalled on this position when he declared last week that they will prevent the People’s Progressive Party/Civic Government from attempting to “dominate and control this entire society”.
Norton has been on the record saying that when the time comes, the APNU will take a decision on its participation in the LGE.
The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has already designated December 12, 2022, as nomination day for the upcoming LGE. On nomination day, parties make their way to a designated location, where their representatives are usually required to submit their list of candidates to the Chief Election Officer, as well as sign on to the required documents, such as a code of conduct, to contest the elections. These representatives are usually accompanied by a large retinue of their supporters, dressed in party colours, although all the parties who submit symbols do not always make a grand entrance or even go at all.
Parties, voluntary groups and individuals are meanwhile required to submit their symbols in accordance with Section 48 (1) of the Local Authorities (Elections) Act, Cap 28:03. The law requires that these symbols be submitted at least 21 days before nomination day.
The PPP/C has already signalled its readiness to contest the upcoming LGE and is in the process of finalising candidates. As far back as August, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, who is the General Secretary of the PPP/C, had said that the party is in preparation mode for LGE.