General Secretary of the Alliance for Change (AFC) David Patterson has announced that the party is gearing up to host its biennial delegates congress to elect new leadership.
The last AFC congress was held in July 2019 and was slated to be hosted at the end of this month. However, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, the party is now planning a way to host the conference while ensuring the safety of delegates.
“What can I say categorically, is that we will be having our national conference this year, there is no attempt from the leadership, or any of the members to put it off longer than is necessary, all our regions have been prepared and have been working towards elections and our conference at this particular time. So, the only difficulties obviously are the issues related to Covid,” Patterson said during an AFC Press conference on Friday.
According to the AFC General Secretary, the party’s national executive will be meeting in August. The party has seen an increase in the number of delegates for its congress.
“And these delegates are taken from both in Guyana as well as the diaspora, which is Canada, USA and the UK. In addition to the 400 odd delegates, our national conference also allows observers. The delegates are the ones who are allowed to vote and to move motions and their representatives from each region or each chapter, observers are obviously members who are not delegates but have full access to the meeting, the only restriction is the voting time,” Patterson said.
Since coming out of power as part of the APNU+AFC Coalition, the AFC has seen a number of resignations from various party officials.
“So, we are trying to find a method during these COVID times to host more than 400 persons. We have already taken a decision that the next conference will be for delegates only but that is 400 persons. We have looked at the option of a hybrid system, whereby some members will be able to log on virtually,” Mr. Patterson pointed out.
At the last AFC Conference, Mr. Khemraj Ramjattan was elected Leader, while Raphael Trotman was elected Chairman of the party. David Patterson was elected General Secretary while Mrs. Cathy Hughes won a landslide victory for the party’s vice-chairman position. Party insiders believe Cathy Hughes may be the best pick at this time to take over the leadership of the party.
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