So who is going to be the PM candidate for APNU+AFC?

Jun 29, 2019 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

David Patterson and Khemraj Ramjattan are living in hope and will end up in insane depression. When Ramjattan was voted by the AFC congress to be the prime ministerial candidate, Patterson said the AFC will put Ramjattan to APNU to be the PM candidate for the next election. He explained that the Cummingsburg Accord, which has validity until May 2020, stipulates that the PM candidate will come from the AFC.
What Patterson does not know, or maybe he knows it but is trying to kerfuffle the PNC, is that the Cummingsburg Accord is a 2015 election covenant. If there is a 2019 general election, the contents of the 2015 covenant cannot be applied to another alliance pact. Both parties will argue that more than four years has passed; developments have taken place that need profound analysis, therefore the Accord has to be reworked.
One of the crucial factors that have evolved in a huge way since 2015 is the electoral status of the AFC. When the PNC and AFC decided to form an electoral alliance, the leadership of the PNC accepted that it needed the strength of the AFC, which objectively, was a large third force. But the results of the 2015 poll revealed that the ten percent of the electorate that the AFC possessed was no longer there. The 2015 statistics showed that just one ballot; just a single vote in Region 8 gave APNU+AFC a parliamentary seat for that Region. And the PPP lost the general contest by just under 5,000 votes.
If the 2015 battle manifested a huge decline in the electoral physiology of the AFC, the last nail in the coffin was the 2018 results of the local government election. There now stands in Guyana, 88 local government authorities consisting of national democratic councils and municipalities. The AFC administers not one of them. But in fairness to the AFC, it did not participate in 88 election battles; only 38. It chose to fight for control of 38 NDCs because it felt those were the enclaves in which its strength could be found. It turned out to be a mirage for the AFC. It lost in all the 38 NDCs.
It has to be a generosity only found in science fiction movies, where a political party, which cannot win one local government seat could ask its senior partner to give it the Prime Minister’s position after the general election is won. Khemraj Ramjattan and David Paterson are grown-up people. They have got to stop dreaming silly dreams. Whoever is the person advising the AFC, his name is like mine, Fred, but his last name is Flintstone.
As the general election draws closer (and we will have an election before 2019 ends) the PNC war room is going to be a scene of phenomenal consensus. No one from the PNC, in or out of Guyana, will accept that the PM slot should go to the AFC. One of the reasons for this is the state of health of President Granger.
The PNC big wigs will not take the chance of putting Ramjattan as PM, because if Granger resigns, the PNC knows Ramjattan will not do a Sam Hinds. For those not familiar with what “doing a Sam Hinds’ means, briefly, when President Jagan died in 1997, Sam Hinds the PM became president, but he agreed to the covenant between the Civic Component and the PPP that he would step down and give the presidency to a PPP leader.
If the PNC leaders drag Ramjattan in the war room and get him to commit orally or on paper that he will give over the presidency in the event of a Granger resignation, influential PNC mandarins will scuttle the arrangement, because they do not think Ramjattan is reliable enough to stick to the deal. The major factor in killing Ramjattan’s chances is that PNC leaders feel that the AFC will demand that Ramjattan sit out his tenure as president.
So it is a done deal – the PNC is not going with an AFC candidate. The PNC is most likely to go with Nagamootoo, who agreed to do a Sam Hinds when Granger took ill and pledged to do a Sam Hinds in the future. Nagamootoo will not be recommended by the AFC. The PNC will choose Nagamootoo in his own right. But even here some PNC hardliners in the hierarchy still feel that it is a risk with Granger’s health to go with someone who is not from the womb of the PNC or from a world of long friendship with the PNC. Nagamootoo’s chances are not guaranteed. He too must stop dreaming.

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