Can the Alliance for Change survive as a political party?

Jan 28, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

One of the strangest things to ever happen to a victorious party in any part of the world occurred after the AFC became part of the government in May 2015. Normally when a party enters office, a deluge of people surrounds it day and night. Its offices are buzzing with activists and the crowds expand exponentially because the successful campaigners are anxious to be part of policy-making or working in the state to influence policies.
After it came to power the head office of the AFC became a ghost town. For any analyst who studies politics this was shockingly weird. I saw this deluge in Barbados and Grenada after elections and in Guyana with victories by the PPP and PNC. But with the AFC this was incredibly absent. I live four minutes drive from the AFC head office; I have to pass there on my way to any part of Georgetown, west of Sheriff Street. I would stop there each day and the single security rank would cut a lonely figure. With each passing day, I would ask where were the hundreds of AFC people I campaigned with.
I would run into them in different places at random – the refrain was the same from all of them. They were driven out by the attitude of every leader in the AFC. Power was achieved and the AFC leaders had no time for them and would show disdain and contempt when approached. Each Monday night the AFC holds its weekly management meetings. I would pass by and see a crowd of ordinary folks waiting for hours to press their grievances and to seek opportunities; most left with pessimism and angst.
I was so angry at the things I heard from these people whenever and wherever I met them that one night I lost my calm and yelled undiplomatically at Minister David Patterson. The event was the wake of his driver. I got to know the gentleman very well during the 2015 campaign. I raised my voice so loudly at David that he turned away but not before I shouted a question at him. When the AFC leaders were begging these people to campaign and these people did making tremendous sacrifice, did AFC leaders ask about their education qualifications and did they tell them that when power was achieved that they must not come around looking for opportunities.
After the 2015 election, the attitude of the PNC to its campaigners was the opposite of the AFC. The PPP and PNC have never let down their campaigners throughout their long histories. One factor explains this – the PPP and PNC have serious working class credentials, the AFC has few. This columnist knows that about both parties through studies of both parties and personal interactions
The AFC is essentially a middle class party that like the PNC and PPP lacks visionary and transformational leadership and is inherently authoritarian in thinking. Few persons in this country know that after the 2015 election, the PNC courted many AFC campaigners and offered them work. Aubrey Norton offered employment to two West Coast campaigners of the AFC. The Ministry of the Presidency did the same. Even the PNC as a political party took one of the AFC strongest female campaigners and employed her as worker with the PNC at Pouderoyen. One leading AFC campaigner accepted the PNC invitation to run for a seat on the City Council as a PNC member and not AFC. He won his local government seat. I attended his victory party at his home where only AFC members Carlyle Goring and Michael Carrington were present.
Where the AFC goes from here is a matter of speculation. The party blows hot and cold almost every day. It held a retreat at the Convention Centre and came out swinging asking that the portfolios of Joe Harmon be reduced. It complained that it was only allotted two City Council seats – Caryle Goring and Sherod Duncan. Nothing came out of its complaints.
The AFC is in power and Guyana’s political culture remains as rotten, debased and tragic as it always was. The AFC and its partner, the APNU, have become indistinguishable from the PPP when that party was in power.
The only people in Guyana that are totally oblivious to the Guyanese people’s growing disillusion with their government are the leadership of the partnership of APNU-AFC. The PNC is a huge historical party. It will survive to contest the 2020 elections. The AFC is not in the same boat. Even if it wants to cling to life, can it survive? Let’s end with Shakespeare;
“Oh judgement
Thou art fled to brutish beast
And men have lost their reason.”

Discover more from Kaieteur News

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Latest News