MORE THAN one month after a ‘Joint Statement’ was released on an agreed tripartite consultative process between the Guyana Government, APNU and the AFC, the two parliamentary opposition parties eventually identified their respective representatives last week.
The Joint Statement, released on January 15 following a meeting held at the Office of the President at the invitation of His Excellency, Donald Ramotar, had promised that the three parties represented in parliament would, “by Monday, December 19, 2011, exchange lists of issues for discussion and prioritisation at the next meeting, scheduled for Wednesday December 21, 2012…”
Further, that they would name two persons each as their “plenipotentiaries to work on identified and agreed on priority issues…” That did not happen.
As the public came to know, the two opposition parties chose instead to ignore their own stated commitment for constructive, tripartite dialogue and settle for short-term collaboration between them to satisfy their own political agendas.
Hence, rather than an anticipated tripartite process in the election of a Speaker and Deputy Speaker for the new 10th Guyana Parliament, as well as an expressed interest in consultation for the 2012 budget,  APNU and the AFC were to engage in the sorry spectacle of public disagreements over which of the two should have the post of Speaker, and then to further disagree over a proposed rotation process.
Eventually, they came up with the compromise of expediency for the AFC leader, Raphael Trotman, as Speaker. That was AFTER APNU’s chairman, David Granger, had earlier publicly declared the AFC’s Moses Nagamootoo as being “unsuitable” for that position.
Interestingly, when MPs subsequently assembled in the parliament chamber to elect APNU’s Granger as the new Opposition Leader, Nagamootoo was reported as a significant absentee.
Whatever the significance of that occurrence, the issue of much relevance to the Guyanese people is how seriously should these two opposition parties be taken with respect to their claimed commitment to work for the national unity and social and economic progress of this nation, given their surprising behaviour to delay for more than a month a response to honour the terms of the “Joint Statement” of December 15.
In the meantime, the government is going ahead with its constitutional obligations in the preparation of the 2012 budget, and with expectations that the two opposition parties would demonstrate the level of political maturity required for the business of this nation to proceed in the best interest of Guyana.
In this context, we wish to draw attention to the very interesting and mature approach reflected by the former Speaker of the House, Ralph Ramkarran, when he chaired a press conference last week on behalf of the PPP, and noted that it would be “in the interest of both sides (government and opposition) in the House to “try hard to have an agreed budget…”
It was clearly consistent with a ‘voice of reason’, and even more significant was that the press conference took place on the basis of a decision taken at the weekend at the first Central Committee meeting of the governing PPP since the November 28 elections.
With his colleague executive member, Minister of Natural Resources and  Environment, Robert Persaud, sharing the press conference, Ramkarran emphasised the stated commitment by President Ramotar to work with the parliamentary opposition, an approach that had influenced his invitation for last month’s meeting to discuss the tripartite approach.
The senior counsel and former Speaker told the press conference: “I anticipate intense discussions. I believe that both sides are mature enough to understand the necessities of the times…”
Well, we shall continue to monitor developments, and assess the gap between words and actions by both sides.