Quarrel or confrontation: David Hinds and the AFC

May 21, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

The quarrel between Guyanese icon, David Hinds, and the Alliance For Change has escalated with a recent published accusation by an AFC defender. There appeared a missive in Kaieteur News last week attacking Hinds. It accused him of focusing on the AFC whereas he avoids the relevant object – APNU. The letter was signed by Courtney Lane.
The story began on April 25, 2016 in the Kaieteur News when David Hinds spoke analytically about the shortcomings of the AFC to which there was a harsh response in a press release by the AFC. Unfortunately, I think the AFC misunderstood what Hinds was saying about the new deportment of the AFC.
There was a subliminal meaning in what Hinds said to the Kaieteur News and it was in the defence of the AFC. There was a Freudian thread in David Hinds’s analysis that favoured the AFC. But sadly the AFC failed to decode both the subliminal message and the Freudian manifestation. Now the AFC and David are at it.
Let us quote selected parts of the April 25 Hinds’s interview with KN. The paper reported; “The political activist said that his conclusion is also grounded in the fact that the AFC has not tried hard enough to balance governing with a commitment to reform the broken political process. “My party, the WPA is also not without blame. We have not asserted ourselves enough. We have allowed our junior status to dictate the extent to which we try to influence the direction of the government.” (unquote). Who could frown on that opinion? Let’s dissect it. The following words need contexuality; “My party, the WPA is also not without blame.” The operative words here are “also,” and “blame.”
What is David blaming the WPA and AFC for? Something all Guyanese are annoyed about. For me the word, “all” is not an exaggeration. I am out there; the APNU-AFC Ministers are not. From the street cleaner to the clerk to the public servant to the intellectual to the business magnate, the feeling out there is that there does not seem to be a transformation of the 60 year old rut that Guyana is. Here is where the subliminality and Freudianism come into David’s interview. He is telling the AFC that the party is perceived to be the new kid that is looked upon to fix a broken system. The AFC can object to that using a time frame but not a political defence.
The AFC can say that you have to give us more time but the AFC cannot deny the dysfunctional society it has inherited remains unchanged. I interpret Hinds’s analysis to have cited the factors that has caused the AFC’s slowness. He says either it is power or they are not trying hard enough.
For me, this is mainstream analysis. It did not warrant such an irascible press release from the AFC. But one can ask the question; didn’t the AFC play into the hands of critical analysts by the outcome of its retreat. I suspect David has information about the contents of that retreat thus his pointed criticism. In that retreat, the AFC has unambiguously asserted its request that there should be a more modern approach to power-sharing (to put it diplomatically)
We come now to Lane’s swipe at David. Lane has a point. If the system is broken and it needs fixing and the AFC is not applying the fixtures then is it possible that APNU is the stagnating factor? Lane doesn’t ask the question. He asserts that APNU is not interested in transformation of the old ways of exercising power but interested in power for power sake.
Lane accuses Hinds of refusing to discuss APNU’s role in the affair. I think Lane is trying to tell us that the AFC may have lost its patience with Hinds because they see his analysis as biased and dishonest.
Finally, I think David’s emphasis on the systemic factors and his downgrading on the role of Harmon may have also infuriated AFC defenders. Yes, the system produced Joe Harmon; the system needs revamping but how can you overlook (I wanted to say exonerate) individual back-sliding (some may say egregiousness) and put it down to the system?
The PPP had a system and a culture that sucked every newcomer into its vortex. But is David Hinds willing to down play the individual display of Machiavellianism that Bharrat Jagdeo brought to the PPP’s culture which led to its further degeneration?
David is familiar with Jean Paul Sartre to know that the individual is as dialectically dynamic as the broad social force of which he/she is a part of.

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Quarrel or confrontation: David Hinds and the AFC

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