Conversation Tree

IS THERE AN OPPOSITION COALITION IN THE WORKS?

The Peoples National Congress (PNC), Alliance for Change (AFC) and Working Peoples 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 outcome of the elections 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.

JAGAN’S LETTER TO GORBACHEV

In commemoration of the 75^th Anniversary of the PPP, I write about a little known event that formed part of the circumstances that shaped Guyana’s entry into the democratic fold of nations.

A TRANSFORMATIVE ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL INSTRUMENT

With only minimal fanfare and little public notice, the National Assembly last week unanimously passed into law the Security Interests in Movable Property Bill 2024. The statutory protection of a credit system over immovable property has long been an aspiration of many who are and were involved in the financial industry. The need became evident as early as the late 1980s as Guyana’s economy began to look to external sources for economic development. By the early 1990s the Government invited a Canadian lawyer who was stationed in Guyana for several months, at intervals, who prepared draft legislation. It then silently vanished, never to be heard of again.

A PROPOSAL TO RESTORE JONESTOWN

Jonestown is once again in the news and is attracting widespread and serious comment. This article, from the paragraph below, was written by Roger Arjoon, a Guyanese, who lives and works in the financial industry in New York. He attended Yale and Oxford Universities and is a Rhodes Scholar. He continues to take an active interest in Guyana. I had this article in my archives, took it out, dusted it off, reduced its size and obtained Roger’s permission to publish it. It was first published on July 25, 2013, and is still very much relevant having regard to the issues being publicly debated. The impact of the lack of democracy in Guyana at the time, and how it facilitated the tragedy in Jonestown, is still to be explored.

THE SPEAKER WAS NOT WRONG! BUT WHAT ABOUT ASHA KISSOON?

The A New and United Guyana (ANUG), Liberty and Justice Party (LJP) and The New Movement (TNM), which contested the 2020 elections, utilized section 22 of the Representation of the People Act (ROPA) for the first time in Guyana’s history and wrote to the Chief Election Officer informing him that they have “joined” their lists. The section provides that two or more lists of candidates can be “joined” for the distribution of seats, but not votes. The lists so joined are called a “combination of lists.” The media baptized them as “the joinder parties.”