Dead meat escapes from the butchery

Jun 27, 2019 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Someone has to tell the AFC that it is the biggest clown in politics anywhere in the world. The party whose own internal election 12 days ago was described as rigged, wants a new GECOM chairman in two weeks’ time, because it says early appointment is critical to establishing public trust in the conduct of the upcoming general elections.
Three highly popular AFC delegates at its party congress on June 15 told me that the name of a certain protégé of the Prime Minister was put on the list of delegates after nomination day was closed. All three said that they have accepted to be named. They are Amar Chinkan, chairman of Region 4 – AFC; Region 5 AFC councillor, Abel Seetaram; and Region 6 AFC councillor, Derek Basdeo.
Last week, I raised this illegality with the man who was general secretary at the time of the AFC’s congress, Marlon Williams. I was desperately looking for parking space and fortunately found one just outside his real estate agency on South Road. I parked and there he was, so I approached him.
Williams said the name of the gentleman was always on the list, but he did not check and went into a rage outside the AFC’s office. I told Williams to his face that he was being untruthful. The delegates for Region 4 have to be selected by the districts of Georgetown, East Bank and East Coast. The names are then vetted by the head of Region 4, Amar Chinkan.
Up to the Friday evening, which was hours before the congress on Saturday, Chinkan told me that he did not have that person on his delegates’ list. Then two well-placed persons told me the defunct women’s arm of the AFC, Women For Change (WFC) suddenly sprang to life the night before the congress and were allowed to name delegates.
This was days after nomination closed. All major parties in Guyana since the fifties have tampered with their internal elections. On the eve of the AFC congress on June 15, cowboy politics and cowboy behaviour took place. People just said they have to be delegates and they were made delegates. It constitutes one of the most improper congresses ever held by a major political party in Guyana since anti-colonial politics took sway in the forties.
This very party that rigged its own internal elections just over a week ago now wants the quick appointment of a GECOM chairman so the elections could have a credible face. Here are the words of the AFC, then you are going to get a heart attack when you are reminded of what the AFC did when Justice James Patterson was appointed.
“The AFC is committed to the rule of law and to adherence to the Constitution of the Republic of Guyana and is of the view that the resignation of Justice Patterson as Chairman of GECOM subsequent to the Court’s ruling was correct and proper.”
But it was three AFC lawyers, who are also the three leading figures in the AFC, that advised President Granger that he can make an appointment outside of the Carter formula. The three are Khemraj Ramjattan, Raphael Trotman and Moses Nagamootoo (the Cummingsburg trio). And how did the Guyanese people know this? Not through the courage of the Cummingsburg trio, but through a confidential email leaked to the press by the Canadian branch of the AFC, which broke with the AFC over the action of the Cummingsburg trio. When the media, armed with the email, approached Ramjattan, the man who is aspiring to be the next prime minister acknowledged that he was the author of the email.
Now the same AFC, which urged the President to do something unconstitutional did not have the moral courage to mention in its press release on the CCJ’s ruling, that it was the AFC which proffered nasty advice to the President. It makes you wonder which law books the Cummingsburg trio was reading. It has to be the lost law books from Timbuktu.
There wasn’t even a vague mention of an apology. The AFC press release calling for a quick GECOM chairman and the pledging of its support for holding of elections “at the shortest possible time,” is dead meat speaking after it escaped from the abattoir.
The AFC knows that it and the PNC are facing early elections as will be mandated by the CCJ in a week’s time. The entire world knew from what the CCJ judges were saying that the government would have lost. The entire world knows in a week’s time the CCJ will order early elections. Dead meat, which was rotting since June 2015, is trying to become fresh.

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