Sunday, November 6, 2011

AFC APNU merger planned

-Gov’t to release details shortly



PEOPLE'S Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) executive member and head of its elections campaign, Mr. Robert Persaud, has said his party is in possession of evidence which suggests that there will be an alliance between the PNCR-led A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and the Alliance For Change (AFC).
Persaud told a media conference here Friday that from all indications, the two parties will be coming together.
"There is an alliance between the AFC and APNU, and there will be evidence that will be revealed shortly about that alliance. Their strategies are the same; the positions are the same; the advertisements… Even what they are running on your newscasts and elsewhere in the newspapers are about the same. We know about the backroom talks that took place, and we know what[are] the arrangements they put in place, thinking they can unseat the government and the post-electoral alliance, those are clearly established," Persaud said.
He noted that both APNU and the AFC are on the same page, adding that they have not offered Guyanese their vision and plans for the future.
"You know what they have offered the people? They are in the business of scandal mongering; they are in the business of talking about all sorts of irrelevant [things]; they have been in the business of generating rumours and all sorts of unhelpful issues that are irrelevant to the electorate," Persaud added.
He gave as one example where the AFC and the PNCR-led APNU are guilty of distorting the facts in the ongoing debate over the President's Pension Fund, whereby they have succeeded in painting a picture as though it is “a Jagdeo Pension Fund” rather than one that every past president of this country has enjoyed, and those in the future will enjoy, regardless of the party that forms the government.
According to Persaud, this strategy of theirs [APNU and AFC] clearly indicates that the two parties are no different, hence the rumour in the past that the AFC’s prime ministerial candidate Raphael Trotman was holding secret discussions with the then PNCR executives, including Robert Corbin.
In February 2010, PNCR leader, Robert Corbin, had accused Trotman of downplaying continuous engagement between the two parties on mutual areas of concern, in pursuit of a narrow political agenda.
On June 19 last year, journalists surprised Trotman, former PNCR executive, the late Winston Murray, and several others in the AFC camp during a meeting with controversial Caribbean political strategist, Hartley Henry at the Pegasus hotel.
Subsequently, the AFC had claimed that the meeting was not about a political coalition between the AFC and the now defunct PNCR.
However, sources later told NCN that there was another meeting the following evening among Henry, Trotman and Corbin.
Corbin has said time and again that the two parties have had several meetings on cooperation and collaboration but the AFC has steadfastly denied that there were ever such meetings.

No comments:

Post a Comment