Longtime General Secretary of the Guyana Teachers’ Union, Coretta McDonald, will now serve as the union’s President after being elected unopposed to the position.
In a statement this morning, the GTU announced that it completed its Triennial Elections and ballot counting exercise on Monday night.
Although unopposed, McDonald picked up a total of 2,987 votes from the union’s membership.
The GTU also announced that Mariska Williams will serve as 1st Vice President while Karl Vanier wil serve as 2nd Vice President after being both elected to those two positions, beating out a number of other candidates.
The new General Secretary of the GTU will be Collis Nicholson with the Deputy General Secretary being Heathcliff Peters. Elections were also held for a number of other positions, including Treasurer and Regional Representatives.
The GTU elections were conducted countrywide over the past few months, bringing together more than 3000 members to cast their ballots.
In the run up to the elections, McDonald had stated that once elected, she would re-examine the agreement signed between the Government and the GTU last year. That agreement did not find favour with many of the teachers and was heavily criticized by McDonald. The agreement runs for three years.
Today, she said her election to the post of GTU President is not just a win for the nation’s teachers.
“As president of GTU, this year is a win for all teachers. This is a win for the nation’s children. And as president, I don’t plan to go out there to talk about what I will do as president, but what we will do as a team, a team as GTU, an extended team, which means our teachers and an additional extended team, which means our stakeholders and the parents as well. We want to ensure that the morale of our teachers is lifted, we recognize that coming out of the last negotiations and the signing of that agreement, our teachers felt disenchanted, they felt undervalued, and at the point, they felt that they were betrayed”, he said.
McDonald currently serves as a Member of Parliament for the opposition, APNU+AFC. She said she is ready to work along with the Ministry of Education in the interest of the nation’s teachers and students.
“If we do what we’re supposed to do, given the kind of resources we need, then the country will benefit. And so this has nothing to do with politics. Again, let me say that this has nothing to do with politics. This is about educating our nation. This is about making our teachers role models, making them fully equipped to deal with the challenges that they have to face in and out of the classrooms. And we can only do that if together as a GTU or as the GTU, we work hand in hand with our partners. And I’m hoping that our partners, the Ministry of Education, they are going to be ready to work with us and that they too will put politics aside and work for the benefit of our teachers”, she said.
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