AFC insists on Hughes as APNU+AFC presidential candidate, tables other options

Last Updated on Sunday, 30 March 2025, 22:19 by Writer

The Alliance For Change (AFC) has agreed to coalesce with the People’s National Congress Reform-led A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) to contest this year’s general and regional elections on condition that its leader, Nigel Hughes, is the consensus presidential candidate but said there was room for flexibility to ensure they go to the polls together, a senior AFC source said Sunday.

The source, who spoke with Demerara Waves Online News on strict condition of anonymity, said there was “mixed support” for APNU to have the presidential candidate and so AFC’s candidate “remains” Mr Hughes, a prominent civil and criminal lawyer.

Other options on the table are that if APNU rejects Mr Hughes, there would be room for “some other person acceptable to the parties.” City businessman Dr Terrence Campbell, who enjoys close relations with the PNCR, has been touted in some circles as an alternative to the AFC Leader.

In order to cement the willingness of APNU and AFC to contest the 2025 general and regional elections jointly, the AFC source said that smaller party would propose Mr Hughes as the prime ministerial candidate if it could not get the presidential candidacy.

The AFC source added that if that party does not get the presidential candidacy, “we expect the leader of the list to be chosen by the AFC”. The AFC said in its statement on a meeting of its National Executive Council that “the Party from which the Presidential Candidate is named, shall not be permitted to nominate and/or occupy the position of the Leader of the List.”

The leader of the list, properly called the Representative of the List, has conventionally been politically responsible for recalling and replacing parliamentarians. However, Professor Harold Lutchman and Mr David Granger performed largely clerical functions by carrying out the wishes of the PNCR Leader. The Representative of the List could refuse to do so but that would trigger a potentially lengthy process that could include a party’s parliamentarians.

According to the AFC source, that party was proposing “40 percent of the allocation of positions across-the-board and at every level, as was the case in 2015.” Elaborating in an official statement on Sunday’s four hour-long robust, open and candid discussions, the AFC said it passed resolutions to the effect that that party “will accept a 60-40 split at all levels of government with 60% of the positions being held by representatives of the APNU.

That is in contrast to the PNCR-led APNU latest proposal of 30 percent of the positions to AFC ranging from the cabinet and parliament as well as other elected and appointed positions.

Sources said PNCR decision-makers at all levels have vowed that their party leader, Aubrey Norton, must be the presidential candidate for any coalition or that person must be drawn from the PNCR. Last year’s biennial delegates congress agreed that Mr Norton would be the PNCR’s presidential candidate unless he alone in his judgement decides to yield to someone else.

Mr Norton told his PNCR’s General Council, a major decision-making organ, that his party recognised the importance of coalition. He, however, said the PNCR has been doing most of the work and his activists must be rewarded. “We are committed towards working to a coalition but ‘we ain’t guh leh nobadee mek deh eyes pass we’ (we will allow nobody to disrespect us). We are well aware that we are better together. We are also well aware that we carry the burden of the work,” he said.

AFC negotiators include Jamaican political strategist Alston Stuart, General Secretary and co-founder Raphael Trotman, and AFC co-founder and former Leader Khemraj Ramjattan, while the PNCR-led A Partnership for National Unity’s negotiators are Ambassador David Hales, PNCR public relations functionary Sherwood Lowe and PNCR executive member Ganesh Mahipaul.