The briefing for stakeholders on the dialogue between the President and the Opposition Leader is likely to be held this week at the offices of the United Nations Development Programme.

The previous session was aborted because of the absence of Dr Roger Luncheon, the leader of President Bharrat Jagdeo’s team of representatives. The first meeting was cancelled due to a disagreement with the PNCR as to whether or not there would be a joint statement to the stakeholders. Having overcome the disagreement, the second cancellation was as a result of a misunderstanding as to whether the meeting would have gone ahead given the delay in the completion of the joint statement following the Septem-ber 15 meeting between President Jagdeo and Leader of the Opposition Robert Corbin.

The high representatives of both leaders last week met with UNDP Resident Representative Jan Sand Sorensen to iron out the remaining details of the format for the briefing and it was agreed that it would be scheduled for this week.

One of the questions which the stakeholders have yet to settle, is the composition of their grouping. The core members include the representatives of the international donor community, the smaller political parties in parliament - GAP/WPA, ROAR and The United Force, the Guyana Human Rights Association, the Guyana Bar Association, the Guyana Trades Union Congress and the Private Sector Commission. To the last meeting that was aborted invitations were extended, among others, to the Guyana Hindu Dharmic Sabha and the Central Islamic Organisation of Guyana.

However, observers be-lieve that the size of the grouping at the briefing would have to be addressed as well as the issue as to whether independent of the briefing by the high representatives the stakeholders would monitor the implementation of the decisions.

The stakeholder briefing is a decision coming out of the June 18 Follow Up Agreement and is one of several mechanisms agreed by Jagdeo and Corbin to keep track of the implementation of the decisions they have taken. One of the reasons for the collapse of the Jagdeo/Hoyte dialogue process was the absence of mechanisms through which the principals could have jointly tracked the various stages of the implementation of the decisions they took.