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Third parties hardly make a difference despite…

Feb 11, 2012 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
While the jury is still out on the AFC’s role in electing the PNC/APNU’s choice of Rafael Trotman as Speaker, I respectfully suggest it must make amends for this if it is to survive.
The AFC may yet pay a high price for dumping Moses Nagamootoo (rejected by the PNC as a sleeping PPP/C supporter) and substituting Trotman instead.
What guides APNU’s rejection of a former PPP leader but finds a former PNC leader acceptable? The AFC must correct an impression that it is failing to pursue its manifesto goals of racial and ethnic balance in all government institutions.
Let’s see how soon it will rapidly ensure that Guyana’s armed forces (as promised to their 30 thousands crossover Indian supporters) are racially balanced.
(1) Ramjattan said in Trinidad that the AFC saved Guyana from ethnic violence. Ramjattan should reconcile jumping the broom with APNU in supporting a former PNC supporter (Trotman] to save Guyana. Otherwise it would give the impression that the AFC will automatically pay up anytime the
Black-dominated APNU holds Guyanese for ransom with threats of violence. Ramjattan must reconcile his role in pushing Moses Nagamootoo to divide the red PPP/C sea. If AFC’s Indian supporters should take a cue from APNU, they cannot be faulted in demanding that Ramjattan walk around the fire seven times (Hindu wedding rites) to redeem himself. Sounds fair to me.
(2)Ramjattan was of the opinion that a third party can never win an election. So what was the intention of the AFC to participate in Guyana’s elections? So far its history shows it has actively sought to destroy the predominantly Indian PPP/C.
If that is not its real intent, what explains its failure to give its devout former AFC supporter Gaumattie Singh a parliamentary seat in 2006, loosing UG Professor Rishi Thakur to APNU and dumping Nagamootoo for Trotman as Speaker?
Where is the racial balance that the AFC preaches, especially when all the former black supporters went back to the PNC/APNU in 2011 and it seems incapable of keeping its Indian leaders? Seem to me that the AFC’s entire praxis is to destroy the PPP/C and empower the PNC/APNU.
But I may be wrong and would like to be convinced.
(3) Whiles it’s true that the history of third parties in both Trinidad and Guyana hardly champions Indian causes and interests, what makes the AFC different? In Trinidad the ONR (Organisation for National Reconstruction… 1980) and NAR (National Alliance for Reconstruction 1986) and COP (Congress of
the People) all pulled mostly Indian votes from the traditional Indian parties (ULF/UNC) while the black dominated PNM support base remained intact.
Basdeo Panday teamed up and allowed ANR Robison to become Prime Minister in 1986 with mostly Indian votes, removing the PNM. Robison soon emerged as the new champion of blacks.
He proceeded to sideline Panday’s supporters and the latter quickly scurried back to his own UNC, subsequently being elected Prime Minister.
The present Kamla Peoples Partnership (PP) achieved power because Indians were united with mulattoes, mixed peoples, a small percentage of progressive blacks, Lebanese and Syrians, all coming together under one umbrella. Manning’s PNM only lost by eight per cent of its supporters.
In Guyana, the AFC party has lost most of its black votes partly because Trotman was no longer the Presidential candidate and was a lazy campaigner.
What else explains this?
It would seem that third parties only arise because the traditional parties are embedded in corruption, which finds disapproval by a small percentage of their base constituents.
With the UF now dead and the WPA a living dead, we will soon find out how soon the AFC will be headed to the cemetery or crematorium.
Vassan Ramracha

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