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One hopes the AFC isn’t blaming the PNC for its descent into nothingness

Apr 22, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

There has been an outpouring of sentiments recently among AFC leader about asserting the APNU’s flag, emblem, vision, character, beliefs, core-values, the works, on the body politic of Guyana. There can be no question about it; there is a Freudian fury in the AFC about its dormancy and fading star. At its general conference in January, not most but all speakers demonstrated that Freudian emblazonment. All the speakers emphasized that assertion.
From thereon, it has been a non- stop-mantra in the AFC that goes like this – “the AFC will continue to bring its core values into the government of which it is a part.” The latest in this stuck record is the Prime Minister’s position that the Cummingsburg Accord needs revamping. Simply put – the AFC wants the covenant to embrace more power for the AFC. When you hear these cries from the AFC, the unfamiliar citizen immediately thinks about the PNC dominating the AFC, a field of thought that the AFC is happy to fertilize. And in fact is fertilizing. But there is more in the story than the AFC is willing to admit. In other words, the AFC’s ailing biology is self-inflicted and citizens should not rush to offer sympathy to a recalcitrant that does not want to mend his ways.
The AFC’s self destruction began without any input from the PNC. The PNC had absolutely nothing to do with the AFC’s bandwagon that the AFC drove over the cliff shortly after the Coalition won the 2015 general poll. Here are the other parts in the story that the AFC is not telling people. And they believe the Guyanese people are so gullible that they would believe them. On the day the AFC leadership met to assign cabinet portfolios that leadership offered the Ministry of the Environment to a personal friend of two AFC leaders; someone who did not campaigned for the AFC. The reaction to this travesty, never before seen in Guyanese politics, was insane anger by AFC cadres.
When I put this into one of my columns, the then General Secretary of the AFC, Minister David Patterson emailed me to say that the AFC’s long standing policy was to offer a cabinet post to a civil society person. AFC cadres told me that Patterson was far from truthful. In any case, the person offered the job was not from civil society but a personal friend of a few in the party. Next there was the Ramaya scandal that has left a irremovable flat tyre on the car of the AFC that has permanently immobilized the AFC.
Come 2020, Ramaya is going to confront the AFC on a PPP ticket. When Ramaya went public that the AFC refused to offer him a substantial position, I saw an email exchange in which it was stated that the President intervened and in fact made the way possible for Ramaya to be the REO of Region 6.  So it was the PNC that came to the rescue of the AFC over the Ramaya imbroglio.
Next, you had the incredible arrogance of the AFC ministers in which AFC cadres were given a daily dose of contempt when they asked for opportunities. Some of this pomposity was sickening and caused me real emotional pain. Never before in the history of politics, a winning party was so dismissive of its soldiers. Not even the elitist United Force in the sixties behaved with such unrestrained hubris. When Dr. David Hinds referred to this as the intoxication of power, the AFC issued a press release advising Hinds that he should be glad he has the freedom now in Guyana to criticize. This party with that statement had already lost its way.
Next, to show the customary intolerance of the media by al politicians in the history of this country, an AFC leader went on an interview with Christopher Ram and accused Dr. Hinds and I of wanting to bring back the PPP into power. These insults were coming from AFC politicians that never even suffered five percent of the oppressive things David and I had to endure infighting for the Guyanese people.
Finally in the continuation of its hauteur, hubris, invincibility, omnipotence and narcissism, the AFC was happy to display its intolerance of independent thought when it issued a press release which said that the AFC rejects my assertion that President Granger appointed his-son-law and two other ministers acting within his right as president. I never made such assertion. The endemic pomposity of the AFC prevents it from simply saying; “Don’t worry, Freddie, we got it wrong, we apologize.”

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