APNU divided on list of candidates for 2011 elections

A LEADERSHIP crisis is looming in the newly formed ‘A Partnership for National Unity’ (APNU) as the parties involved in the coalition reportedly cannot agree on a list of candidates, particularly a running mate for its Presidential candidate Mr. David Granger. At a media conference on Thursday last, member of the APNU and leader of the small Working People’s Alliance (WPA) Dr. Rupert Roopnarine said “internal issues” have delayed APNU’s announcement of its leadership heading into the 2011 General and Regional Elections.

“We know that there are issues on the table that we have to still resolve, as we have been resolving issues quite smoothly all along, we don’t anticipate that there would be any difficulties in resolving those issues before us…we’re continuing to work on this,” Dr Rupert Roopnarine told reporters at the PNCR, now APNU, Headquarters at Congress Place, Sophia.

APNU had planned to announce its leadership team for the upcoming elections during its launching last month. However, that was pushed back as the political movement grapples with internal issues regarding its leadership.

But a source close to APNU told this publication that the main challenge over finalizing a list is identifying the Prime Ministerial candidate along with those who will be proposed in the senior positions.

“ We cannot move forward at this time since there seem to be no agreement on who will be the APNU’s Prime Ministerial candidate; a number of names were proposed and most of those did not receive the full support of the membership,” the APNU official disclosed under the request of anonymity.

According to the official, among the names that were proposed is that of Dr Rupert Roopnarine.

“Dr Roopnarine was the first name proposed. However, some members feel that he is not the best choice, so that is one of the issues we are discussing. You also had a few other names that came up, like Ms Backer (Deborah) and even Mr. Corbin (Robert). However, we are still looking at a consensus candidate. We are hoping that these can be sorted out quite early so that we can move forward at least by the end of next month,” the source added.

Meanwhile, Roopnarine announced that the Guyana Peoples Partnership (GPP), the Guyana National Congress (GNC) and the Emancipation Thrust (ET) have joined the APNU.

However, when asked about the constituencies of these small, virtually non-existent movements, Roopnarine hinted that more was expected.

“We would like to see the large organizations come into the Partnership for National Unity, we would like to see trade unions coming in, we would like to see professional organizations coming in. There is no question about that and our preference would be for really substantial organizations to come in,” he said.