APNU today called on President Donald Ramotar to demonstrate leadership and uphold the people’s right to local government elections.

The APNU statement follows:

A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) is deeply disturbed by President Donald Ramotar’s dilatoriness in issuing instructions to allow the Guyanese people to exercise their right to elect their representatives in local government elections at the earliest possible date.

President Ramotar told his supporters at a town hall meeting in New York organised by the People’s Progressive Party’s Association of Concerned Guyanese, “Well, my mother used to say you can’t have it in cake and have it in bake; you can’t have it both ways, you have to make up your mind what you want.”

President Ramotar is the one who needs to make up his mind and do his duty as a national leader. He is suggesting, falsely, that there is a ‘choice’ between local government elections and general and regional elections, that is, between ‘cake’ and ‘bake.’ He is suggesting also that, the motion proposed by the Alliance For Change to express ‘no-confidence’ in the government which could lead to general and regional elections could pose a constitutional dilemma.

President Ramotar, in so doing, is pretending that there is a contradiction or a choice. There is none. He has failed the nation by not exercising his executive, constitutional duty to make a timely decision for the conduct of local government elections. The nation is entitled to both local government (LGE) and general and regional elections (GRE). President Ramotar alone is the author of the ‘cake-or-bake’ confusion that he is complaining about.