THE DIMINISHING AFC

Oct 22, 2018 Editorial

The Local Government Elections (LGE) are less than a month away, but it is utterly confusing to many why the Alliance For Change (AFC) leadership as a group and as individuals continue to make statements that make them look silly in the eyes of the electorate who they are wooing to vote for them. They have persistently stated that leaving the Coalition and going into the LGE as an independent party is necessary to prove to its opponents and the country in general that the AFC is a strong party with a solid base of supporters. But the truth is the AFC was forced to go it alone because its negotiations with APNU to contest the elections as a Coalition had broken down. In others words, the AFC is responsible for the present situation it found itself in.
The attempts by the AFC to assert some kind of relevance in the LGE has become an abysmal failure that has even baffled its small group of supporters. As reported in this and other newspapers, the recent launching of its LGE campaign in New Amsterdam attracted only 30 people, which suggests the people, including its small coterie of supporters have bought into the narrative, which says that the AFC leadership is weak and indecisive. Many AFC members have abandoned the party because they seem to believe that it is no longer viable as a third force. They came to this conclusion because of their leaders’ lackluster performance in the Coalition government.
Many believe that the AFC is attempting to recreate its image that it had twelve years ago when it was founded.
The perception of the AFC ministers in the Coalition government is that they have become a rubber stamp for APNU’s policies, whether good or bad. Yet, they are attempting to perpetuate the view that somehow the AFC has an independent voice in the government.
The AFC is struggling to maintain its identity as a junior partner in the government. It has taken only 30 months for the AFC to be in the worst crisis of its 12-year history with deep divisions within the government. Not only did the AFC fail to put in place a mechanism to keep its larger partner in the coalition in line, address the insecurities of all the country’s people and ensure fairness in hiring and assigning of senior positions, but its top leaders have patently become enraptured by the trappings of power and have neglected their responsibilities to their constituency. This is why in the last three years since the Cummings-burg Accord was signed, there has been no real attempt by its leaders to ensure that what was agreed in the Accord was followed to the letter.
The inability of the AFC to successfully push for constitutional reform, which it campaigned on and to act in the interests of its members and supporters by promoting the policies and fundamental principles, which its leaders have gloriously expounded in their Action Plan and throughout the 2011 and 2015 campaigns have seriously ruptured its credibility.
The AFC could be gutted in the LGE, which makes it likely that it could suffer the same fate as the United Force, which joined the PNC in a coalition government in 1964 only to be tactfully dumped in 1967 by the PNC. It could vanish from the political landscape.

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