THE three political parties, which joined their lists for the upcoming General and Regional elections, have decided to equally split their time in the National Assembly should their merged votes give them a seat or more.

Appearing on the Guyana Chronicle’s online programme, Vantage Point, on Thursday, A New and United Guyana (ANUG) Presidential Candidate, Ralph Ramkarran explained: “If each of us has 2,000 left-over votes, we’ll have one seat and the person will serve 1/3 of the time. Each party will have a member for 1/3 of the period in parliament. So, the first person will resign after 1/3 of the time, the second person nominated by the second party will serve for 1/3 and so on.”

The distribution mirrors ANUG’s interpretation of its position on shared governance whereby the country to be managed by all political parties elected to government but represented by a different president each year. On January 18, 2020, The New Movement (TNM) and Liberty and Justice Party (LJP) announced to the public that they had forged a Joinder of Lists Agreement, which would see their votes being counted collectively after the elections.

Ramkarran said that if the parties individually meet the total votes for one seat on their own, they will have that seat, but left-over votes will be counted collectively for the progressive 1/3 representation in parliament. He said on the programme that the parties’ decision to join their lists ensures that no votes are wasted in the case that they can be added up to form a seat in the House.

“If [it is that] 6,000 votes would give you a seat, assuming none of us gets 6,000 votes but each of us gets 2,000 votes, we get one seat; if we get 4,000 votes each we get two seats. If we did not have this joinder of lists, those votes would be discarded. So, we can get seats in normal way and the left-over votes will be counted, they will not be discarded; that’s the technical advantage,” he said.

Though the parties each share strong views on matters such as land rights, the decriminalizing of marijuana, governance and Amerindian rights, the attorney-at-law said that there are no matters that stand to break their bond.

“We have different flagship issues, the three parties, but we have no disagreements among ourselves about each other’s’ flagship issues and we have agreed that when we have joint campaigns, it will be quite proper for each party to promote its own flagship issue,” Ramkarran said. “The great advantage of it is, I think it’s more in relation to the message we’re sending to the Guyanese people, a message of unity, and many people were very happy.” Meanwhile, ANUG is continuing on its party’s campaign at the grass root level and plans to launch its party’s manifesto soon.