The leader of the Alliance For Change\u00a0 Khemraj Ramjattan, General Secretary David Patterson and Treasurer Dominic Gaskin met with President Donald Ramotar, Dr. Luncheon, and advisor Gail Texeira on Thursday 30th May between 5:30 and 7:45 pm.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The President’s invitation for a meeting was accepted after he had indicated that he wanted to have a direct communication line with the leaders of political parties so as to express his views on the major political and economic matters of concern, and also to hear very directly the views of the political parties on these issues.<\/p>\n
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The AFC made it clear that it did not want this new development to become a talk-shop with an excess of political gaffe, with nothing fruitfully being realized and no concrete follow-up action being taken. As a result of this approach, the AFC team heard the President’s perspective on a number of matters; and in return the President heard the AFC\u2019s perspective on same.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Outlined in summary form were the matters discussed:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Public Procurement Commission <\/b>\u2013 After lengthy discussion in which the President\u00a0tried to make\u00a0his case for maintaining\u00a0Cabinet’s no-objection role in procurement matters, the AFC maintained our position that there should be no cabinet involvement in the tender process, that the PPC must be established under the existing legal framework. It was finally agreed that Dr. Luncheon would put their arguments in writing to which we could then respond in writing with a view to narrowing down precisely where we differ. The positions will then be made public.<\/p>\n
NCN <\/b>\u2013 The\u00a0President seemed to believe that the bias on the part of some of the private media was justification for the bias displayed, in Government’s favour, by\u00a0NCN.\u00a0Our team argued the case that NCN should be run on lines like the BBC.\u00a0He requested that\u00a0AFC write to them on\u00a0what AFC wants, which we will do.<\/p>\n
NIS<\/b> \u2013 The President\u00a0wants an AFC financial nominee to the NIS\u00a0Board.\u00a0 The AFC asked how early will the Board members be removed and recommended that the entire board of NIS be replaced, however the Government indicated that Dr. Luncheon will remain as Chairman, with new members assisting the board. Dr.\u00a0Luncheon was critical of Opposition\u00a0bashing the NIS and making out that the NIS is about to collapse.\u00a0\u00a0He is to circulate Government\u2019s discussion paper on NIS to the AFC.<\/p>\n
Radio Licenses<\/b> \u2013\u00a0President\u00a0avoided discussion on whether or not former President Jagdeo acted in bad faith.\u00a0 Their position is that the leader of the opposition delayed naming their nominee to the Broadcast Authority and this delayed the commencement of the new Act.\u00a0 The AFC advocated \u00a0a clean-slate starting \u00a0with the revocation of the grants made in 2011, a reversion of these to the NFMU; and,\u00a0with all applying\u00a0 to a new\u00a0and the Broadcasting Authority granting.<\/p>\n
GPL<\/b> \u2013 The President\u00a0was concerned about the budget cut of $5B.\u00a0 The AFC pointed out that the real cost of fuel this year will be 8% less than the anticipated costs due to a fall of world oil prices, means that GPL will have an additional monies. The AFC made it clear that\u00a0the GPL\u00a0Board\u00a0be sacked and more monies would be saved almost instantaneously. The reduction of line losses and improving efficiency at GPL are areas the AFC continues to be concerned about.<\/p>\n
Amaila Falls<\/b> \u2013 The President was very concerned about this cut. \u00a0The AFC team assured him that the AFC will support this once the IDB due diligence approves the project.\u00a0 The President mentioned that lack of approval might send the wrong signal to IDB.\u00a0 We begged to disagree.<\/p>\n
Berbice Bridge toll reduction\u00a0<\/b>\u2013\u00a0The President asked us to explain how we propose that this be achieved since to pressure a private company to reduce its rates will be nationalization.\u00a0He suggested that\u00a0the AFC should put its proposal to the Board of Berbice Bridge Company.<\/p>\n
Assent of two bills \u2013 <\/b>President Ramotar was adamant that he would not give his assent to these Bills as they are unconstitutional. \u00a0There was no movement on this.\u00a0 He also stated that the Opposition was welcome to bring them back in six months. We assured him that we would and that if he chose not to assent, the AFC wwould not give support to the Anti-Money Laundering Bill. We indicated that he should assent and let his litigious AG take it to Court for that body to pronounce on unconstitutionality of the Act.<\/p>\n
Appointment of Chancellor of Judiciary<\/b> \u2013\u00a0President stated that he does not want to advertise for position of Chancellor, which is being asked for by the Leader of the Opposition. He asked the AFC for its thoughts which were given.<\/p>\n
Region 8<\/b> – The AFC requested that in view of the Government’s rotation of Regional Executive Officers, maybe it was time that REO Harsaywack was rotated from Region\u00a08. This we felt would prove whether the Government was just talking or would adhere to the principle of rotation.\u00a0 The AFC felt it was time that the Government considered\u00a0doing so\u00a0as an act of good faith.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The representatives of the Alliance For Change felt that the meeting was most cordial and discussions were indeed very frank.<\/p>\n
END<\/p>\n
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The leader of the Alliance For Change\u00a0 Khemraj Ramjattan, General Secretary David Patterson and Treasurer Dominic Gaskin met with President Donald Ramotar, Dr. Luncheon, and advisor Gail Texeira on Thursday 30th May between 5:30 and 7:45 pm. The President’s invitation for a meeting was accepted after he had indicated that he wanted to have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7134,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activities","category-pressreleases"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/image001-2.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4F7T1-1cm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4610"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4612,"href":"http:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4610\/revisions\/4612"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}