One day after three of his party’s key members hopscotched their way over to the APNU, Leader of the Alliance For Change, Nigel Hughes today said it is unlikely that coalition talks between his party and the APNU will continue.

The decision by party members, Sherod Duncan, Juretha Fernandes and Ricky Ramsaroop to add their names to the APNU’s list of candidates appears to have caught the AFC by surprise. Within hours of the decision by the three being made public, the AFC announced the cancellation of their membership with the party. The party also said its latest proposal to the APNU did not find favour with the former coalition partner.

Speaking to reporters this afternoon just outside a meeting with GECOM for political parties, Mr. Hughes said the time for negotiations has come to an end.

“I don’t think it would assist either side to go into what did or did not happen, it hasn’t happened and that time is gone. And I think we are all going to concentrate on the elections and in the case of the Alliance For Change, we are pretty certain that our policies, once presented to the public, they will speak for themselves”, he said.

On the issue of three of his senior party members deciding to switch sides and support the list of the APNU, Mr. Hughes said the AFC’s Constitution is clear on the issue of allegiance.

He said “I don’t know about a fraction of the AFC, our Constitution is quite clear. You can’t pledge allegiance to another political entity while being a member, and so those persons have ceased to be members and so the APNU has three former members of the Alliance For Change”.

The APNU has announced that Juretha Fernandes, who was the AFC’s point person on Finance, will serve as its Prime Ministerial Candidate for the upcoming elections.

The AFC Leader said Fernandes was never featured in any of the discussions with the APNU to be the Prime Ministerial Candidate. He said those discussions focused mainly on policy and positions.

“She never featured at all in the discussions, because the discussions were essentially about principles and policies other than the Presidential Candidate who the APNU insisted be the person the PNC identified, so it was never about persons or personalities. The only personality was who they said must be the Presidential Candidate”, Hughes said.

APNU Presidential Candidate and PNC Leader Aubrey Norton on Wednesday said the APNU will be moving forward.

“We spent months trying to find a coalition, solutions to a coalition. We went to and fro and I felt at one stage that with an election day called, you cannot continue to be kicking the tin cup down the road and so we have made firm decisions on how we are moving forward”, Norton said.

Talks between the APNU and AFC started just over six months ago, but crawled along as there could not be agreement on several issues. In the initial stages of the discussions, the AFC demanded a 65% share of seats and positions in the coalition. It was further reduced to 55% after the initial demand was rejected, and by the start of this week, the AFC dropped that demand to 35%.

The APNU did not find favour with several other aspects of the latest proposal from the AFC.

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