Simona Broomes launches party, aims to get out youth votes, rules out pre-election coalition with APNU, AFC

Last Updated on Saturday, 1 February 2025, 18:32 by Writer

Former People’s National Congress (PNCR) member and coalition government minister, Simona Broomes on Saturday launched her own political party with the aim of driving mostly young people to vote, even as she ruled out her Assembly for Liberty and Prosperity (ALP) party coalescing with any of the other opposition parties.

“The ALP is an independent movement and we have launched there and those were my clear words that we’re independent,”, she said when asked by Demerara Waves Online News after addressing the launching ceremony held at the Impeccable Banquet Hall, Brickdam, and Sandeman Place, Georgetown. She instead said the ALP would coalesce in the National Assembly in the interest of Guyanese. “We are independent and we will coalesce in the National Assembly as it relates to people. When people win, the ‘Is’ will have it,” she said. During her address, she hailed the attendance of AFC Leader, Nigel Hughes and Leader of the Justice For All Party (JFAP), Jaipaul Sharma.

For his part, Mr Hughes believed that “the more parties that enter the race, the better it is” to give Guyanese more choices for the betterment of Guyana. Asked if he would court ALP, he said the AFC was willing to “collaborate with anybody” once the principles are there but he dodged the specific questi0n of whether that could include a coalition between the two parties. “If you’re collaborating with everybody, you have to have a relationship of some sort, whether you call it a coalition or whether you call it an arrangement,” he said.

Boasting that the ALP has already amassed a membership of more than 1,000 persons across Guyana, in addition to over 300 female overseas supporters, Ms Broomes said she was not worried about splitting the opposition’s support base that could lead to another victory by the incumbent People’s Progressive Party (PPP). Instead, she hoped that her party’s emergence would motivate youths and other undecided persons to turn out and vote in the 2025 general elections slated for either October or November. “We have to understand the reality on the ground that there is a lot of people out there who have been saying that they wouldn’t vote. There is a lot of young people who are not encouraged to go to the polls,” she told Demerara Waves Online News. She queried what would happen to Guyana if youths stay away from the polls rather than support a movement that would help to address poverty, joblessness, crime and violence and other ills. “We are more vulnerable so I think it’s a blessing in disguise for me to come and focus on young people. Young people want somebody they can trust,” she said.

She brushed aside questions about whether she fell out with PNCR Leader, Aubrey Norton.

The founder and former President of the Guyana Women Miners Organisation (GWMO) said the ALP would not be funded surreptitiously but she did not say who would be its backers in the fight against corruption, sexual abuse, poverty, corruption and discrimination. “Nobody can agitate and push money under the table to the ALP. We are here for Guyana. We are here for the good change and a good change speaks to integrity,” she said. The ALP leader also said her party would advocate for free and quality education, technical-vocational skills, recreational opportunities and self-sufficiency.

In her address, Ms Broomes rode on her personal history as a civil society activist, a gold miner in a male-dominated field, a campaigner against trafficking in persons (TIP) and promoter of the rights of women and girls. The United States government, in 2013, recognised Ms Broomes for her contribution to the fight against TIP.

After APNU+AFC won the 2015 general and regional elections, Ms Broomes was appointed Junior Minister of Social Services and almost immediately became well-known for personally leading investigative teams to examine the working conditions and hours of work of employees at stores especially in Georgetown.

She was eventually moved from that ministry and appointed Junior Natural Resources Minister before she was shifted again to the then Ministry of the Presidency and assigned responsibility for youth affairs but with no duties, something that the government then had refuted after reports surfaced that she had been merely given a desk and chair. Ms Broomes had landed the PNCR and the then government in a controversy over a fracas with two security guards, one of whom had alleged that he was locked up after an altercation with her.