The A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) says it is condemning the alleged withholding of notice to its Members of Parliament for a scheduled meeting with the visiting Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative Validation Team.
APNU stressed that this was “not an ordinary meeting”, since the EITI Validation is an international assessment of Guyana’s transparency, accountability, stakeholder engagement, and governance of its oil, gas, mining and other extractive sectors.
“In a country now defined by vast petroleum wealth, every Guyanese has a right to know whether national institutions are allowing independent voices to be heard,” the APNU said.
The party, in a statement on Friday, said that correspondence addressed to the Clerk of the National Assembly requested that all Members of Parliament be invited to meet with the EITI Validation Team. However, APNU said that Government Members of Parliament reportedly received notice of their meeting while Opposition Members did not.
“Some Opposition MPs only became aware of the engagement shortly before it was due to begin. That occurrence is deeply troubling. It strikes at the heart of parliamentary fairness, democratic accountability, and Guyana’s international obligations under the EITI process.”
The Aubrey Norton-led APNU is now demanding an “immediate, written, independent explanation from the Parliament Office”. It added that the explanation must state when the correspondence was received, who received it, how it was processed, who was responsible for notifying Members of Parliament, why Opposition MPs were not notified in a timely manner, and why Government MPs appear to have been properly facilitated.
“The public must not be asked to accept the convenient explanation of administrative error without documentary proof. If this was incompetence, it was incompetence with a political effect. If it was deliberate, it was an abuse of a parliamentary office that must remain impartial.
This incident cannot be separated from the wider pattern under the PPP/C administration: weakened parliamentary scrutiny, restricted opposition participation, rejected questions, stalled oversight, and repeated attempts to manage or mute independent voices on matters of national importance,” APNU said.
The party was keen to add that Guyana cannot claim democracy abroad while Opposition MPs are denied timely notice of meetings with international assessors at home.
“Guyana cannot claim transparency while the very process designed to test transparency is itself compromised. Guyana cannot claim accountability while the Parliament Office fails to account for a matter of this seriousness.”
The party is calling on the EITI Validation Team to “record this incident as material evidence of the environment in which stakeholder engagement and parliamentary oversight now operate in Guyana.”
