AFC says will go solo if electoral pact with APNU not settled by Monday
-APNU signals end-of-year deadline
Governing coalition partners APNU and the AFC differ on when negotiations for a revised Cummingsburg Accord are expected to wrap up, with the AFC saying that Monday will be the last meeting between the two electoral allies while APNU has indicated that talks are likely to conclude before the end of the year.
The AFC yesterday said that the party is prepared to campaign alone if a new accord is not agreed by Monday. “This deadline can no longer be extended,” the junior coalition partner said in a statement.
Meanwhile, APNU’s chief negotiator Volda Lawrence told a press conference held at Congress Place yesterday that, “We believe that we will able to conclude all negotiations and all our agenda items by the end of this year as we are working towards.”
Lawrence declined to comment on the matters which may be delaying the negotiations and refused to comment on a media report which claimed that AFC Leader Khemraj Ramjattan has been accepted as the APNU+AFC coalition’s prime ministerial candidate.
“Well, I have read many articles, I have read articles where persons reported as though [they] are part of the negotiating teams. I don’t know when they come to the meeting and when they leave but I have never seen them, but I have noted that persons have been reporting in that manner. But I say to you that negotiations are still taking place and it is a negotiation and at the end of the negotiations, both parties will be speaking on all the matters and I’m quite certain with the full media,” she said, adding that it would be “unethical” to publicly comment on the ongoing negotiations.
The AFC, meanwhile, told a press conference at its Kitty Headquarters that it will launch its elections campaign on November 23rd with or without APNU.
“AFC is ready. We desire a partnership with the APNU. It is the preferred way to go in these elections but we are battle ready and with or without our partners, we are ready to go and all of our plans are in place,” Deputy General Secretary Leonard Craig said.
Craig further explained that the outstanding issue is “a formula for the awarding of ministerial positions and seats on the Regional Democratic Councils.”
Notably, the party, which had previously halted negotiations over APNU’s reluctance to accept Ramjattan as the PM candidate, would neither confirm nor deny that this aspect of the accord has been finalised.
The AFC, which had declared the negotiations stalled last month, in a statement, explained that discussions between the parties resumed after October 24th, with several productive high-level meetings between the leaders of the AFC and APNU, as well as between the two negotiating teams.
President David Granger and Ramjattan had met following this suspension of talks and apparently reached a compromise.
Sources had told this newspaper that part of that compromise was a commitment from the AFC that its prime ministerial candidate would not rise to the presidency.
Additionally, the AFC National Executive Committee at a November 2nd meeting, approved a request to extend the mandate of the negotiating team to conclude the revised accord to November 10th, 2019, but that date passed with no agreement.
“In the light of the tremendous progress made in completing the revised Cummingsburg Accord and the significant impact that the accord is likely to have on the outcome of the upcoming General and Regional Elections, the AFC has agreed to a final meeting with APNU on Monday 18th 2019, at which a single outstanding matter is to be resolved. All other terms of the accord have been provisionally agreed,” the statement from the party said.