THE Liberty and Justice Party (LJP), A New and United Guyana (ANUG) and The New Movement (TNM), on Valentine’s Day, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to merge their votes after the upcoming elections.

The parties have written to the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), informing the body that the parties have agreed to a “joiner” of the lists pursuant to section 22 of the Representation of the People Act.

However, the parties would be contesting the elections separately but the votes would be combined at the end of the counting process and seats allocated to the combination of the lists and not the individual parties.

The party with the largest number of left over votes will be entitled to nominate the first member of the National Assembly, who shall serve the length of time, while the parties with the second and third largest number of votes will nominate their respective representative.

The parties also agreed that the occupant of a seat as a result of left-over votes will vote in parliament “only if there is approval of all three parties”. In the absence of approval, they have agreed that they will refrain from voting.

Presidential Candidate of TNM, Dr. Asha Kissoon, said every vote should count and the parties agreed to show unity in the upcoming elections.

Presidential Candidate of ANUG, Ralph Ramkarran, said the three parties agreed to join their lists together, and at the end of the election, the votes will be combined without any leftovers.

“The unity that we are seeking in the country is being expressed by this agreement with which we have arrived at, we are sending a modest message of unity to the Guyanese people, that while we are each competing at one level, we are cooperating at another level, we need cooperation in Guyana,” Ramkarran said.

Presidential Candidate of the LJP, Lenox Shuman, thanked the joining parties for their hard work in finalising the agreement.

“The larger political parties continue to preach national unity but are unwilling to accept the hard work that is required for national unity… we are demonstrating to the Guyanese people as to what it takes that to ensure that this country is united,” Shuman said.
Shuman said other small parties were invited to the joiner.

“We believe that united parties are far superior, compared to divided, because we represent the people, we had reached out to Citizens Initiative and Change Guyana to participate and I think we would have been a stronger union with their presence because collectively we could have done a significant amount more.”