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It’s not clear what Burke’s ‘beef’ with the AFC is

Jul 30, 2010 Letters

Dear Editor,
I respond to the letter written by Mr. Rickford Burke in SN of July 27, 2010. The letter castigates the AFC leadership for “going alone” to the 2011 elections. However, it stops short of saying who exactly should be the AFC’s coalition partners.
Burke’s intentions are at best ambivalent as he raised his “major reservations” of the present PNC leadership yet he castigates the AFC for its “flippant, preemptive preclusion of dialogue” with the two main parties. What is even more interesting is Mr. Burke, who led the charge against the PPP’s death squad, and rightfully so, expects that party to dialogue with the AFC. It is not clear exactly what Burke’s beef with the AFC is.
Burke and several commentators on the SN blog do not realise that the AFC is leading from the front and is getting its house in order. We are still awaiting the emergence of a clearly defined and specified big tent. Should the AFC wait until the big tent gets its acts together? The AFC can only control its own destiny and not that of the big tent.
Let me back up a little and return to the vicious attacks on the AFC via Randy Persaud and the Guyana Chronicle. The Chronicle recently led an attack of misinformation and outright lies of ethnic infighting in the AFC. It concocted a pro-Ramjattan Indo-Guyanese faction (I was placed in this group) and a pro-Trotman Afro-Guyanese faction. The Chronicle even placed me at a meeting which I never attended. The Chronicle also peddled that the Afro-Guyanese faction wanted reunion with PNC. What was the Chronicle trying to accomplish? It was instigating the old racist “don’t split the votes” strategy. With a real chance that young, educated and professional Indo-Guyanese will come over to the AFC, the Chronicle tried the old strategy which was used devastatingly against ROAR in past elections.
Of course, the evidence shows there was no truth in the rumour mongering of the Guyana Chronicle. As a matter of fact, the SN even reported that there could be an imminent merger of the Jagdeo PPP and the Corbon PNC. The AFC neutralized the insidious “don’t split the votes” strategy by: (i) announcing its leaders; and (ii) setting the parameters of whom it is willing to work with in pre-election coalitions.
As far as I am aware, these parameters do not exclude anyone from civil society who are willing to work with the AFC. The AFC needs all the help it can get and I am sure it will welcome others to join. I joined the AFC and I sincerely hope others will do the same.
We live in a second-best world where we cannot get the perfect outcome. I have noted Mr. Tacuma Ogunseye and others calling for Constitutional reforms rather than elections. Mr. Ogunseye’s position is idealistic and I am sympathetic to his call. However, there is no way the oligarchic PPP, with its tentacles deeply inserted in
the lotto funds and the National Treasury and its ability to offer state largess to selected friends and families, will agree to Constitutional reform at this point. Therefore, we have to settle for the second-best option – as violence is not one of them – which is to go to the elections.
The best outcome would be to see the PPP lose the election as it deserves this.  The AFC is no doubt confident it can achieve the latter. However, the second-best outcome, in the absence of Constitutional reform, would be to see a greatly weakened PPP after 2011. That will be a step in the right direction. Perhaps change can only come gradually.
However, should the PPP win this election convincingly its backward economic and foreign policies, glaring corruption, arrogance and control of the society will be raised to the n-th power. Therefore, it would be wonderful if civil society and ex-members of the political parties can get together in a well organised grouping so the AFC could see something tangible with which to work. Until then the AFC has to keep pressing ahead in spite of the constraints it faces.
Tarron Khemraj

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