The senior representatives of President Bharrat Jagdeo and Leader of the Opposition Robert Corbin are yet to agree on the form that the stakeholders’ briefing should take.

A briefing of stakeholders by the representatives is one of the decisions of the June 18 Follow-Up Agreement to the May 6 communique.

It is one of a number of mechanisms that the leaders agreed to put in place to monitor implementation of decisions they take and to identify bottlenecks and take remedial action for ensuring their smooth implementation.

The issue of implementation is one of the rocks on which the Jagdeo/Hoyte dialogue had foundered.

Their representatives, Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon and PNCR Chief Whip Lance Carberry cannot agree as to whether or not they should provide the stakeholders with a joint statement. Dr Luncheon says that the agreement between himself and Carberry is for a joint statement. Carberry does not dispute that there was such an agreement but that the basis for such a statement could no longer exist if he had no direct access to the secretariat which has been set up in the Office of the President to monitor the implementation of decisions. The establishment of the secretariat is another of the June 18 decisions.

Dr Luncheon at his weekly press briefing last week said the senior representatives agreed that a formal submission would be made to the briefing group on the status of the implementation of the communique agreements. However, he said that the PNCR then decided that it wanted separate reports to be made to the briefing groups. “For the Office of the President this has become an intolerable and untenable situation. The idea of having the briefing group sitting in judgement of the efforts of the main political parties in Guy-ana and thus making judgements and recommendations couldn’t be stomached by the Office of the President.”

He said that the Office of the President is “unprepared to entertain such a spectacle of the representatives of the two political parties appearing before the donor community and others on a monthly basis and perhaps indefinitely to present and defend different reports on the implementation of agreements.”

Carberry says, however, that Dr Luncheon’s explanation is only giving part of the story. The PNCR’s move to call for the submission of separate statements came only after he was informed by the Cabinet Secretary of the Office of the President’s discomfort with him approaching the secretariat set up in the Office of the President.

As a result, Carberry says, if he could not access the secretariat directly and had to do so through the President or the Cabinet Secretary as was indicated to him, then there is no basis for an agreed joint statement.

He asserts too that the Cabinet Secretary misunderstands the nature of the engagement of the stakeholders’ briefing, which is to review the progress being made and agree any follow-up action, which is necessary to ensure smooth implementation of decisions. He said that stakeholders are expected to have their own monitoring mechanism and the briefings are to provide them with an opportunity to seek clarification. According to Carberry, the briefings are not intended to be interrogation sessions.

The PNCR Chief Whip explained that the first encounter with the stakeholders was to discuss modalities and the composition of the stakeholder grouping, which is expected to be composed of the diplomatic community, civic society and the other parliamentary parties. He says that at that meeting it was agreed it was for the stakeholders’ grouping to decide on its composition and so inform himself and Dr Luncheon when they next meet with them.

Stabroek News understands that the stakeholders’ grouping in which the United Nations Development Programme is tasked with administrative responsibility, will meet shortly to discuss the issue as well as the civic and other organisations that are to be included in the grouping.