Opposition wins no confidence motion in Guyana

Guyanese would most likely go back to the polls in general elections before the end of March, 2019, after the opposition People’s Progressive Party (PPP) won its no-confidence motion 33-32 Friday night when Alliance For Change (AFC) back-bencher Charrandas Persaud voted against the government.

“There may be outcomes which are not predictable or outcomes which have not been anticipated, but the outcome has to be accepted and we want our supporters in particular- those who support the coalition government- to understand that we are going back to the polls; this is not the end,” Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo told a news briefing after a ministerial meeting following the historic vote.

Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo, who sponsored the no-confidence motion, and Persaud separately rejected claims by pro-government supporters that the AFC legislator sold his vote for millions of dollars.

“No my friend, I can’t be bought,” Persaud said.

“The answer is ‘no’. We were hoping that we would get someone or two persons to vote ‘conscience’. I myself was a bit surprised about the arrangement that he voted but I suspect that he comes from the sugar belt too and that’s what I’m thinking, that he comes from the sugar belt and living in that community, he probably saw the hardships,” SAID Jagdeo in reference to Persaud living and working in Berbice where a number sugar estates were closed and thousands of workers laid off.

With the last general and regional elections having been held in May, 2015, the next polls were due the latest by August, 2020.

Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo called on Persaud to say “whether he had been compromised because he had given no indication that he had reneged on his commitment to the coalition or that he had some displeasure or that he had become disloyal to the party to which he had belonged and the government to which he had belonged”.

The no-confidence motion was tabled, the PPP said, in light of increasing unemployment, closure of sugar estates, alleged corruption, mismanagement and failure to attract large-scale foreign direct investments.