Local Government
Norton hints at APNU’s participation in upcoming local gov’t polls: Leader of the Opposition and Chairman of A Partnership For National Unity (APNU), Aubrey Norton has hinted at his party’s likely participation in the upcoming Local Government Elections (LGE), vowing to prevent the government from attempting to “dominate and control this entire society.” Since the announcement of
LGE last month, APNU has not sent a clear signal as to whether it will be participating or not. Instead, Norton has consistently said that the party will make the decision when the time arrives. APNU’s coalition partner, the Alliance For Change (AFC), on Sunday announced that it will not be contesting the local government polls with the present list come March 13, 2023. The AFC’s National Executive Committee (NEC), in a statement, said that no election should be held on the existing list of electors because it is “bloated, illegitimate and a source of electoral fraud”. At his weekly press conference on Tuesday, Norton was asked about the announcement and whether the APNU will follow suit. He said that AFC is a separate political entity and is entitled to make decisions it deems fit adding that APNU will do the same. “In terms of the APNU, we are in a different position. We will engage and then we will determine what is in the best interest of our people. For instance, we have strongholds in Linden, we have strongholds in New Amsterdam, in Bartica, in Mahdia and in the last election we beat the PPP in Rose Hall. Now what is the PPP hope? The PPP hopes that nobody will go and they will get all the seats and dominate and control this entire society. “We have made it clear that we will protect our strongholds how we do it, we will disclose once we would have completed all our analysis. We will disclose how we will do it. What we are sure of is we are not going to allow the People’s Progressive Party to take over Georgetown, New Amsterdam, Linden etc,” he said. APNU+AFC has been contending that the voters’ list is padded with the names of dead and migrated persons. They have been calling on GECOM to embark on a process of house-to-house registration as a means of accurately representing the voting population. However, GECOM has consistently refused that request.