NOTWITHSTANDING earlier declarations of coalescing, the A New and United Guyana (ANUG) and the Federal United Party (FED-UP) submitted separate Lists of Candidates on Nominations Day, yesterday, at the Umana Yana.
The two parties arrived at the location separately, with ANUG having camped out since Wednesday, and was the fourth party to submit its list to the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM).

ANUG will be contesting only in the general elections, in some geographical constituencies. However, going it alone in the general elections proved to be too challenging for FED-UP, which settled to contest only the Regional Elections, in two administrative regions, namely Regions Five and Six.

“We haven’t been able to present a joint list, unfortunately,” explained ANUG Presidential Candidate, Ralph Ramkarran, moments after he submitted his party’s List of Candidates.
He was however optimistic that the two parties will cooperate going forward on the campaign trail.

“We still very friendly with FED-UP, we hope to campaign with them and we hope to have informal relations, but it was too difficult, the time was too short. There’s no coalition, coalition only applies to government not really to political party, there’s no coming together,” he said.

ANUG and FED-UP are two among a number of new political parties that were formed in 2018 with the hope of contesting Guyana’s next elections, set for March 2.
Ramkarran was however confident of the Lists of Candidates submitted by his party.
“Our list is in order, numbers are ok; everything is fine. We have a very powerful list that comprises Guyanese of every walk of life, ethnic group, professional people, powerful people, and we expect that when the Guyanese people see this list they will come on board,” Ramkarran said.

According to Ramkarran, ANUG will be contesting general elections in Regions Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven and 10.

TOO DIFFICULT
“The outlying regions were too difficult for us to get to, Regions One, Eight and Nine, so we did the regions we have access to. It was very, very difficult because we’re a new [party], a lot of people don’t know about us and it’s very difficult to persuade people to sign up,” Ramkarran noted.

To contest the general elections, political parties had to submit a National Top-Up List of Candidates with at least 40 members, backed by no less than 300 nominators; in addition to at least six Geographical Constituency List of Candidates who collectively come up to at least 25 candidates. The six Geographical Lists requires at least 150 nominators per list.
Ramkarran, a former executive member of the Opposition, People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPPC) party, said should his party win a seat in Parliament; it will be focusing on constitutional reform. The PPP/C and the governing APNU+AFC party are the country’s two leading political parties.

“We are telling the electorate that the time has arrived for Guyana to have a national unity government, and we want to canvass and campaign for constitutional reform which will ensure that the two parties serve in the same government in equality, and we hope that that will appeal to the Guyanese,” Ramkarran said.

ANUG and FED-UP are two of a total 13 parties that successfully submitted List of Candidates to contest at Guyana’s March 2, General and Regional Elections.
FED-UP’s List of Candidates was submitted by attorney and party executive Chandra Sohan, who noted that he preferred not to comment on the reason the coalition was never made official.

FALL THROUGH
“I would rather not address that at this stage. That is not the arrangement as of right now, that arrangement has fall through, so we are submitting our list on behalf of FED-UP only. We are going to be right now contesting the regional elections, we have lists for two Regions, five and six,” Sohan informed, as he stood at the gate of the Umana Yana awaiting his turn to submit his party’s List of Candidates.

He believed that the party would fare better in trying to obtain a seat in the Regional Democratic Councils of the respective regions. The Region Five (Mahaica-Berbice) RDC has some 18 seats to be won while the Region Six (East Corentyne-Berbice) is made up of 30 seats.

“Our chances are excellent. Because that is where the party was founded initially and that is where our stronghold is, so we believe that we will be able to do well in Regions Five and Six,” Sohan said.
However, even qualifying to contest Regional Elections had proved a challenge for the Berbice-based FED-UP party, which encountered issues when it submitted its two lists of candidates.

After the party initially submitted the lists they left the venue noting that they had to correct some aspects of the list. They later returned and the lists were accepted by GECOM.
To contest the elections in the two regions, FED-UP needed to submit a minimum of 18 candidates for Region Five and 30 candidates for Region Six, with a minimum of 150 nominators per region.