Norton will be presidential candidate but open to stepping aside for consensus replacement

Last Updated on Thursday, 21 March 2024, 22:03 by Denis Chabrol

Leader of the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR), Aubrey Norton- confident that he would be reelected to his party’s top  job at internal elections in August- said he would be the opposition’s presidential candidate, but he would be willing to make way for a consensus pick.

“As is presently structured, I see that we’ll have a congress, I would be elected leader and I would be the presidential candidate,” he said when asked by Demerara Waves Online News on Thursday while seated next to another PNCR presidential candidate hopeful, 46-year old Amanza Walton-Desir. A West Indian-trained lawyer, she is currently Shadow Minister of Foreign Affairs.

At the same time, he did not rule out allowing a consensus candidate to become the opposition’s presidential candidate in general elections that are due by November, 2025.

“If circumstances demand that we find a consensus candidate and I do believe that such a candidate would be in the interest of the development of our party and Guyana, I will be disposed to facilitate it but I am not one who will ever say never,” said the 67-year old Mr Norton, a political scientist and international relations expert who was trained in Guyana, Cuba and the United Kingdom.

Also likely to vie for the PNCR’s leadership and ultimately the presidential candidacy is 49-year old Roysdale Forde, a Caribbean-trained lawyer and Shadow Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs.

Regardless of who is the opposition’s presidential candidate, he or she would be coming up against incumbent President, Irfaan Ali, 43,  the holder of a PhD in Urban Planning from the University of the West Indies.

The PNCR Leader on Thursday restated that his party’s congress, which will include internal elections, would be held before August 31, 2024.

That open-ended date continues to be the source of less than seething discontent among some party leaders in and out of the current executive. Party insiders told Demerara Waves Online News that efforts to have a soon and settled date continue to be greeted with resistance.

For some,  the Congress should have been held in December, 2023- every two years in keeping with the PNCR’s constitution- because it was last held in December 2021.