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Monday, July 14, 2025

UNC feeds off Guyana govt’s collapse

Wake-up call for PNM—Lee

by

Gail Alexander
2395 days ago
20181222

The Guyana gov­ern­ment’s col­lapse last Fri­day is a cau­tion­ary tale for the Dr Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion.

That’s how the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress views the last Fri­day’s de­vel­op­ment where Guyana’s David Granger coali­tion gov­ern­ment col­lapsed fol­low­ing a no-con­fi­dence vote against that ad­min­is­tra­tion when gov­ern­ment back­bencher Char­ran­dass Per­saud vot­ed against his own Gov­ern­ment.

Per­saud vot­ed late Fri­day with the Peo­ple’s Pro­gres­sive Par­ty (PPP) Op­po­si­tion on a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion, col­laps­ing Granger’s ad­min­is­tra­tion which had two more years of of­fice.

Per­saud, an at­tor­ney, was a mem­ber of the Al­liance For Change (AFC) par­ty in the coali­tion gov­ern­ment Part­ner­ship for Na­tion­al Uni­ty (AP­NU). His vote had been de­scribed as cru­cial, since the coali­tion had a one-seat ma­jor­i­ty in Guyana’s Na­tion­al As­sem­bly Par­lia­ment.

Per­saud is re­port­ed by me­dia as say­ing he vot­ed with his con­science as he had felt sti­fled. He added that he would re­sign from the AFC and from Par­lia­ment. As a re­sult of the sit­u­a­tion Guyanese na­tion­als will re­turn to the polls in March.

Con­tact­ed on the is­sue yes­ter­day, Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment deputy leader Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald said she heard of the Guyana de­vel­op­ment but could not com­ment just yet. For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Den­nis Moses did not an­swer and oth­er min­is­ters didn’t re­ply to queries.

How­ev­er, UNC deputy leader/whip David Lee said: “This in­trigu­ing de­vel­op­ment is a wake-up call for every­one in the Caribbean re­gion. It’s par­tic­u­lar­ly in­ter­est­ing, since the per­son who tipped the no-con­fi­dence vote against the Granger gov­ern­ment was a mem­ber of that gov­ern­ment. It means to say that peo­ple in the Granger gov­ern­ment had ap­par­ent­ly thought long, hard and care­ful­ly about the sit­u­a­tion in Guyana and took a con­sience vote.

“This de­vel­op­ment has im­pli­ca­tions for Caribbean pol­i­tics and right here at home. As we know, the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion is on a slip­pery slope with pub­lic opin­ion.

“This is one of the worst Christ­mas sea­sons for av­er­age cit­i­zens and busi­ness­peo­ple al­so. We know the pub­lic’s feel­ings will fil­ter back to MPs in the rul­ing PNM, par­tic­u­lar­ly PNM back­benchers—so this is a cau­tion­ary tale for the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion.”

He added: “You can run but you can­not hide from your own mem­bers, or MPs as the case might be. We’ve been con­sid­er­ing a num­ber of mat­ters to come in the New Year, in­clud­ing no con­fi­dence mo­tions against sev­er­al peo­ple on the Gov­ern­ment. So who knows? It’s hap­pened in Guyana and T&T is a Caribbean leader. There­fore, 2019 will be a very in­ter­est­ing year.”

UNC MP Bhoe Tewarie how­ev­er said the sit­u­a­tion was in­struc­tive not on­ly for the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment but al­so the UNC.

“What hap­pened in Guyana can hap­pen here—but some­one in the PNM will have to have a con­science first. The mes­sage for the PNM is that de­spite their best hopes, they’re a com­plete fail­ure and they have to con­sid­er if sim­ply hold­ing on to pow­er is more im­por­tant than any­thing else,” Tewarie said.

“The mes­sage for the UNC is that it’s nice to talk of coali­tions which seem the easy way to get in­to gov­ern­ment, but man­ag­ing a coali­tion in gov­ern­ment in T&T is gueril­la war­fare—ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult.”

On pos­si­bil­i­ty of a “con­science vote” af­fect­ing the PNM Gov­ern­ment, PNM par­ty of­fi­cials said PM Row­ley had re­moved the “whip” and al­lowed a con­science vote for the Par­lia­men­tary de­bate on ap­point­ment of a Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er in Au­gust and all PNM MPs sup­port­ed the de­ci­sion. But they not­ed that the Op­po­si­tion hadn’t re­moved its whip de­spite Row­ley’s chal­lenge for that to be done.

“So we’re ready for any con­science vote or de­bate—we hope the Op­po­si­tion is,” a PNM ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber who did not want to be named said.

T&T gov­ern­ments’ own is­sues ...

T&T has its own case in 2000 when the Bas­deo Pan­day ad­min­is­tra­tion col­lapsed af­ter then-MPs Ralph Maraj, Trevor Su­dama and Ramesh Ma­haraj fell out with the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress and vot­ed against Gov­ern­ment mat­ters in Par­lia­ment. Un­able to pass laws, then prime min­is­ter Pan­day called an elec­tion the fol­low­ing year, re­sult­ing in the 18-18 dead­lock and ap­point­ment of Patrick Man­ning as prime min­is­ter.

The Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship coali­tion elect­ed in 2010 had in­ter­nal dif­fi­cul­ties with its Con­gress of the Peo­ple part­ner. Ex-COP leader Win­ston Dook­er­an and COP MP Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan vot­ed against the PP gov­ern­ment’s con­tro­ver­sial Con­sti­tu­tion Amend­ment bill in 2014—ex­press­ing con­cerns on it—while COP leader Prakash Ramd­har and COP MP Lin­coln Dou­glas vot­ed for it, while COP MP Rodger Samuel ab­stained.

Then prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had al­lowed a con­science vote on the bill, which was passed by sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty votes. The PP coali­tion re­mained to­geth­er un­til be­ing vot­ed out of of­fice in Sep­tem­ber 2015—fol­low­ing which coali­tion part­ners went sep­a­rate ways.


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