THE coalesced parties of A Partnership for National Unity+the Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) have submitted on Nomination Day, April 7, a National Top Up List that reflects the highest level of competence emanating from the coalition’s camp in the face of General and Regional Elections.So says the leader of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA), Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine, whose party forms one faction of the APNU coalition.

At an APNU+AFC press conference yesterday, Dr Roopnaraine both addressed the issue of the selection of candidates to form the National Top Up List and disclosed that the parties, in their selection process, had “placed a great deal of emphasis on competence.”

This, he said, was done in response to a lack of competence, from which the WPA posited Guyana was suffering.

He further related that the coalition has treated the matter with importance, and had strongly insisted on “integrity”, which resulted in the nomination of candidates who could be trusted in political office.

“We are trying to ensure — as far as we can — that the list will pass those tests,” Dr. Roopnaraine added.

Meanwhile, General Secretary of the AFC, David Patterson, squeezed in that the first criteria for the selection of candidates who had made the list would have been membership in one of the six parties forming the coalition.

Nominations would have been made by each region, he said, after which the shortlisted candidates would have been considered depending on the allocation of representatives for each party.

This was done while a “balanced agenda” was maintained; while geographic location, age, and gender would have been among the other criteria for the selection process, it was revealed.

But the selection process of each party would have been relative to that party and its list of criteria, since an agreed position was not adopted by all parties forming the coalition. As such, it was revealed, the criteria for selecting representatives for each party was not a generally agreed policy, but differed for each party.

That being the case, both Mr Patterson and Dr. Roopnaraine were unable to confirm the decision surrounding the exclusion of longstanding People’s National Congress member and former APNU Member of Parliament (MP), Ms Vanessa Kissoon.

Referring to Presidential Candidate David Granger’s reasoning for the exclusion of Ms Kissoon — which was that she had served two political terms — the AFC’s General Secretary noted that this was not an agreed position of the AFC.

Patterson then shed some light on the fact that, while the AFC has term limits on Executive Members, there is no term limit on Parliamentarians.

“The coalition is made up of six parties. The list should be a representation of each of the six parties, and we are satisfied that the list is representing that,” Patterson concluded.

Subsequent to confirmation that Kissoon had not made the Top Up List on Nomination Day, Mr Granger had asserted that the list had been a “balanced” one, and that Kissoon had already served two terms in her political career.

Prompted on whether two terms were the maximum for any party member in the APNU, Granger responded in the negative, positing: “We have a list of criteria, and those criteria were applied because of the work that is ahead of us.”

Mr Granger had then refused to respond to whether Ms Kissoon had been informed, prior to submission of the list, that her name had been excluded from it.

By Ravin Singh