The AFC needs a reality check

Jan 24, 2019 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Is the AFC living in ‘Disneyland’? The party has to be operating in another galaxy if it is serious about possibly discussing its choice of a Prime Ministerial candidate this weekend.
The AFC is clearly assuming that it will go into the elections as a coalition with the APNU. That assumption may be too ambitious.
The APNU+AFC Coalition has been marked by betrayal. The APNU dumped the AFC for local government elections. And while the AFC continues to insist that the Cummingsburg Accord is in force until after the next elections, the reality is that the Accord expired and has not been renewed or renegotiated by the APNU.
If the AFC had any self-respect, it would seek a new Accord with the APNU. It has not yet cemented such an arrangement with the APNU. Yet, it is suggesting that the issue of an AFC nominate Prime Ministerial candidate could be considered as one of the issues to be discussed this weekend.
The APNU will be under a great deal of pressure to not concede the Prime Ministership candidate to the AFC. The Prime Minister succeeds the President and the APNU is still reeling from the angst that it was an AFC Member of Parliament who brought down the government in a no-confidence motion.
The Coalition Government has been riven with mistrust between the two parties. An internal email, which was circulated among senior AFC personnel just before the November 12, 2018 local government elections revealed the troubled relationship between the AFC and the APNU. It was clear from that missive that the AFC felt that it was not being treated as an equal partner.
The AFC, under the Cummingsburg Accord, was able to obtain 40% of Cabinet seats and 40% of the coalition’s seats in the National Assembly. This was disproportionate to the votes, which it is believed that the AFC brought to the Coalition and a source of division between the AFC and the APNU.
The PNCR, the main party in the APNU, felt that the AFC had gotten more than it deserved. This continues to a source of mistrust between the two sides.
The AFC has its own internal worries. It has failed to keep an independent line within the government and has allowed itself to be bound by the principle of collective responsibility within Cabinet – which some of the leaders once alluded to as a Stalinist principle.
Full executive authority rests not with Cabinet but with the President, this effectively has resulted in the AFC having to subordinate its independence to the demands of the APNU.
The PNCR continues to insult the AFC. The PNCR has already made it clear that President David Granger is its choice for the presidential candidate even though it has not even held talks with the other parties, which make up the APNU. Nor has the APNU held negotiations with the AFC on a coalition for the elections.
Sections of the AFC leadership are clearly desperate to hold on to the trappings of political office. They are therefore operating as if the AFC has the license to the post of Prime Minister in any future coalition government.
The AFC should be first asking itself whether the APNU wants to go back into an arrangement with a party from which one of its parliamentarians voted ‘yes’ in a no-confidence motion on December 21, 2018.
The AFC must therefore stop and take a reality check. The APNU may not be interested in an AFC Prime Ministerial candidate. The AFC will have a hard time convincing the APNU that it should retain 40% of Cabinet and the coalition’s seat in parliament.
The lack of internal security will mean that the APNU will want to take control of the Ministry of Public Security in any new government.
All of this means that key elements of the Cummingsburg Accord – the position of Prime Minister, the 60/40 split of Cabinet and parliamentary seats and guarantees of strategic Ministries – cannot be retained in a future APNU+AFC government.
The AFC leadership should also expect dissent from within its party. It has numerous disaffected members who are concerned that the AFC has become a doormat of the PNCR. Those members could well demand that the AFC return to its original position when it was formed.
That position was that it would never join with either the PPPC or PNCR. With the new “kid on the block’, ANUG, saying very much the same, the contest is wide open as to who will be the kingmaker for the next government.
Given the PPP’s choice of its presidential candidate – a choice, which has led to deep rifts with the PPP – the PNCR may well calculate that it no longer needs the AFC to win the presidency.

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The AFC needs a reality check

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