CARICOM Heads place weight on smooth relations for elections - Jagdeo Stabroek News March 26, 2000 The CARICOM Heads now place more importance on the smooth relations between government and opposition in the conduct of free and fair elections than on inter-party relations between the PPP and the PNC. "They are not too concerned about... the inter-party dialogue because they recognise that given the proximity of elections there would have been lot of posturing, and my argument to the Heads of Government was that the mere fact that people are talking now... is progress." This was the rationale which, according to President Bharrat Jagdeo, prompted the acceptance by the CARICOM Heads of a recommendation from St Lucia's Prime Minister, Dr Kenny Anthony, to discontinue the involvement of the CARICOM facilitator in the Herdmanston Accord dialogue process. But the PPP and the PNC had expressed a desire for the facilitator, Maurice King QC, to continue to be involved in the process. Dr Anthony who is assigned responsibility for monitoring the political developments in Guyana, made his recommendation during the caucus of the CARICOM Heads in St Kitts when he presented a report of the facilitator's work up to December 31, 1999. "Prime Minister Anthony recommended that we... not continue with the facilitator but he saw the need, maybe, for a three-person team to visit Guyana to review where we are with elections." President Jagdeo said that the latter recommendation had not been accepted. He said too that the CARICOM Heads would review the situation at their annual conference in July. He said he had "reiterated the Government of Guyana's view that we were working to meet the timetable set up by the Herdmanston Accord. The main opposition party has indicated that they also want to have elections conducted within that time frame." The President observed that there was a great deal of cooperation between those two parties and other forces at the level of the Oversight Committee. "If all goes well given the level of the cooperation there we may be able to conclude everything within the timetable..." Noting that holding the elections within the time frame was not just a government responsibility, President Jagdeo explained that if there should be any change in the level of cooperation between the parties and civic groups, he would then brief his CARICOM colleagues and at that point in time "they may decide what additional steps would be needed or what form of intervention they may need to take to see that the process remains on track to hold elections in accordance with the deadline as established by the Herdmanston Accord." Information Minister, Moses Nagamootoo, who chaired the press conference told reporters that some of the issues which had been on the agenda of the dialogue process were now being discussed by the parties at the Oversight Committee. These issues, he said, included the elections machinery and race relations. The dialogue process was one of the Herdmanston Accord measures which were intended to help in improving the relations between the parties and contribute to the return of political normality. However, the process did not get started until September 1998 and by February 1999 had run into trouble, and it took the intervention of then Commonwealth Secretary-General, Chief Emeka Anyoaku, during a visit in May that year to broker a resumption. The talks did not resume in earnest until August, but very little had been accomplished by the end of December.