There are white folks advising APNU+AFC

Dec 17, 2019 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

---

There was a trenchant reaction by the PNC to an observation made about the upcoming elections in Guyana by State Department official, Dr. Robert Ellis. Ellis made a prediction about a PPP victory in April, before he became a scholar employed by the State Department.
The APNU+AFC leadership referred to Ellis as belonging to a lobbying firm whose service the PPP is making use of. What APNU+AFC did not go on to mention is that it has employed the service of a foreign lobbying firm too. This firm’s consultants have been working out at Congress Place since March of this year, in a project named Operation Palm.
I refer readers to my column of Wednesday, August 14, 2019, “The pathetic nonsense Granger’s British advisor uttered.” In that column, I brought out information that the head of Operation Palm met the AFC’s executives at State House and addressed them on election strategy. He advised them to play up the personality of Granger in the election campaign.
What is disturbing about this country is its pathetic journalism in an age where information is virtually available to anyone who wants it, because of the ubiquity of social media. This gentleman came to Guyana in August, met with the PNC leadership, met with more than thirty members of the AFC’s national executive, and not one journalist from even the opposition-aligned media sought to investigate.
No journalist has asked David Granger if the PNC has a foreign consulting firm doing research for it at Congress Place. No journalist has asked David Granger if at his government residence, he facilitated a meeting with the AFC’s executive members. No journalist has asked any of those AFC executives if they met this gentleman at State House. No journalist has asked Khemraj Ramjattan, the leader of the AFC, if David Granger facilitated a meeting at State House with the foreign consultant.
Six AFC executives who were there, told me about the incongruity, in that the man was introduced to the gathering without his name given. The reason for not offering the name is because both the PNC and AFC do not want information on him and Operation Palm getting out.
Here is an interesting disagreement that occurred within the AFC when Granger sought to have his foreign advisor address the AFC.
One leading female AFC bigwig suggested that a select group meet with the consultant instead of the entire executive body. She didn’t want too many persons knowing about the man’s work in Guyana. Ramjattan, for all his faults, opposed the suggestion and argued that the invitation was issued by Granger to the AFC’s national leadership, and the entire executive body should be in attendance.
So why is the PPP silent on Operation Palm? The answer is simple. It is silly to think that the PPP does not know about Operation Palm. It is silly to think that the PPP does not know that a foreign Caucasian lady has been at Congress Place since March.
The answer is that the PPP has its own Caucasian strategists advising it. The PPP feels that if it exposes the PNC’s links with a White foreign company, the PNC will retaliate and expose them too. The point is, both leviathans are ashamed for the Guyanese people to know that foreign White consultants are planning election strategies for them. It doesn’t look good in terms of the race question.
The obvious question on the tongue of every Guyanese is: why bring in the White man? What can he tell Guyanese politicians that the locals cannot? So now that the PNC is crying foul about Robert Ellis, will the media do its work? Will the Guyanese media at least try to attain some level of international professionalism?
Do you know that in their efforts to dirty Opposition Leader, Jeremy Corbyn, for the just concluded nation election in the UK, one of the leading daily British broadsheets, The Telegraph, sent down a team to Guyana a few weeks ago to gather dirt on Corbyn’s communist connections to Cheddi Jagan and the PPP?
The 2020 national election in Guyana is going to be a nasty one. Because of the money to be gained from oil wealth, the major contenders – PPP and PNC – are going to resort to all types of stratagems and conspiracies. It is left up to the media to separate the sheep from the goats, fiction from fact, secret operations from open projects.
Finally, the media need to zero in on another type of surreptitious thing going on – both parties are doing professional surveys about the election results. They are terribly worried about what those surveys reveal.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper)

---

---