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The Chairman of the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) Hon. Shurwayne Holder, MP, says that his party stands “ready to engage the government in good faith talks on needed electoral reforms in time for the 2025 General Elections.” The PNCR has been proposing a series of changes needed to deliver free, fair, and credible elections to the Guyanese people.
Holder, speaking at his party’s weekly press conference, Congress Place, Sophia, was responding to the US Ambassador Sarah-Ann Lynch’s remarks that the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Government and PNCR-led Opposition needed regular engagements to move the development of Guyana forward, Holder stated, that the PNCR “entertain no hope that such engagements at any level would deliver benefits, given the PPP’s obsession with seeking total one-party domination and control.”
He said there remain a number of mechanisms and opportunities for such engagements at many levels, but the PPP remains heavily resistant, even though the US Ambassador’s thinking on electoral reform recently is in consonance with their beliefs.
“The PPP continues to unreasonably resist all attempts at improvement. The PPP continues to be deluded that a bloated voters’ list and a pro-PPP GECOM can deliver credible, accurate, and acceptable General Elections. Elections with the present voters’ liss and the present configuration of GECOM cannot and will not deliver credible and acceptable elections,” Chairman Holder stated.
Holder added, “The PPP has shown absolutely no interest in such forums. Instead, it has continuously sought to sideline and undermine” the Opposition. “The PPP-chaired parliamentary Sectoral Committee on Natural Resources, for example, has never met during this Parliament. Opposition members have not been appointed to state boards and commissions.
Opposition-led local Councils are being bypassed and mistreated. The list goes on. Furthermore, Government-Opposition engagements would bear no fruit because of the PPP’s obsession with secrecy and disdain for transparency. Meaningful dialogue requires that the opposition have access to many of the documents and information the PPP hides from the Guyanese people. How can there be serious engagement when the government does not have an interest in transparency and accountability?” the Chairman of the PNCR quizzed.
