A Partnership of National Unity (APNU) on Thursday celebrated its 10th anniversary, saying it did well in government and promised to unveil a 10-year plan that will “accelerate faster economic growth, greater employment and increased economic opportunities”.
A press release quoted Chairman and former President David Granger as saying that “APNU worked well throughout its decade in Opposition from 2012 to 2015 and in Office in a coalition with the AFC from 2015 to 2020”.
“APNU, in 2020, launched a Decade of Development: 2020-2029 – a framework for a ten-year plan that will accelerate faster economic growth, greater employment and increased economic opportunities,” the release added.
Granger, according to the release, “expressed regret that two partners – Justice For All Party and Working People’s Alliance – chose to withdraw from the Partnership of their own accord”.
He said the Partnership welcomed the Equal Rights and Justice Party and the Guyana Nation Builders Movement.
Below is the entire press release
A Partnership of National Unity (APNU) on Thursday celebrated the 10th anniversary of its establishment and emergence onto the country’s political landscape in 2011. APNU’s Chairman, former President David Granger, addressing a virtual ceremony, described APNU’s birth as “…the most exceptional event on the political landscape in the past decade.”
The Guyana Action Party, Justice For All Party, National Front Alliance, People’s National Congress Reform and Working People’s Alliance – the original five parties of the Partnership – were inspired by the prospect of pursuing the ‘common good’ and of ensuring that everyone could enjoy ‘a good life.’
APNU, in a Coalition with the Alliance for Change (AFC), participated in the General and Regional Elections in 2015 and 2020. The Coalition’s performance signaled the superiority of the ‘proportionality’ or PR electoral system favouring the emergence of small parties and the formation of coalitions which reflect and represent the country’s complex racial, regional and religious landscape.
APNU’s inclusionary approach, Granger said, was the death knell of the paranoid ‘winner-takes-all’ approach still favoured by the People’s Progressive Party.
APNU, according to Mr. Granger, made a covenant with the Guyanese people to work together to reunite the country’s fractured polity. He referred to APNU’s first Manifesto for the 2011
General and Regional Elections which advanced the idea of a ‘good life’. This depended on a sound education, satisfactory employment, economic opportunity, individual equality, political empowerment and social protection for the vulnerable, at the personal level, and on good governance, a sustainable environment, national unity and public security, at the national level.
Mr. Granger said APNU worked well throughout its decade in Opposition from 2012 to 2015 and in Office in a coalition with the AFC from 2015 to 2020. He expressed regret that two partners – Justice For All Party and Working People’s Alliance – chose to withdraw from the
Partnership of their own accord. The Partnership, he said, welcomed the Equal Rights and Justice Party and the Guyana Nation Builders Movement.
APNU, in 2020, launched a Decade of Development: 2020-2029 – a framework for a ten-year plan that will accelerate faster economic growth, greater employment and increased economic opportunities.
APNU General Secretariat,
Agricola, Georgetown
