Which sane voter is going to choose the AFC?

Jan 09, 2020 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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I believe there are two parties in this country that have to stop the moral sickness that characterises their so-called existence and do the right thing – accept that reality must be faced, history moves on and they too must move on. They are the AFC and the WPA.
History moves on. We cannot stop it. Bolt is gone. Tendulkar is gone. Michael Jordan is gone. Chris Gayle will be going. One day Stephen Curry will go. One day Beyonce will fade and be replaced. You call it dialectics.
The WPA was a radical party of the 1970s. That was almost fifty years ago. Rodney is dead. Josh Ramsammy is dead. Andaiye is dead. Bonita Bone is finished with politics. Dr. Nigel Westmaas is finished with politics. Dr. Clive Thomas is finished with active politics. Rupert Roopnaraine is finished with active politics. Moses Bhagwan is finished with active politics and lives in the US where he is touching 90. Kwayana is in his mid nineties, living in the US.
Over 70 percent of our population is under forty years of age. They did not grow up with the WPA. My opinion is that almost 100 percent of the Guyanese population, not the electorate but the nation as a whole, will not choose the WPA in front of maybe six other political parties.
The WPA has no meaningful membership, no meaningful support. It has no resources much less the resources needed to contest a general election. It is an insult to the people of this troubled land for three or four persons to keep talking about a party named the WPA.
The decent thing to do is to acknowledge there is no longer biology and anatomy and move on.
The Alliance For Change is facing humiliation so large that one has to look hard to find a similar example since Independence. The AFC is at the moment caught in a vexatious controversy that will certainly cause it to lose the vote of any sane Guyanese. Before we describe the dilemma and its antecedents, some notes on how history moves.
The AFC was born into the 2006 elections. It had two formidable fortresses that were so strong that maybe in 2020 or 2025 it could have won the government. One was a section of Guyanese population who genuinely wanted to move away from the PPP and PNC and search for a multi-racial future. The second was youth who welcomed a new formation that held out promise.
The 2011 election results further strengthened the arrival of the AFC. It replicated the efforts of the United Force in 1964 when in 2015, it became only the second third force to enter government. But from day one after the election results were known, the AFC began to falter, a self-destructive journey that has finally ended in its demise.
While selecting its ministerial candidates, three of its founding members called one of their friends and offered her the Ministry of the Environment. It devastated cadres who were qualified and who fought valiantly to make the AFC a success.
More than six of the second tier leaders besieged me to expose this depravity in my columns. I did that. David Patterson sent me a deceiving response which I will shortly make public.
As the years wear on, AFC lost quality people and the quality of its politics faded. The ubiquitous accusation was that it lost its Third Force identity and could no longer deliver an independent, multi-racial rampart that Guyanese longed for.
As 2018 drew to a close, it became embroiled in an ugly confrontation with APNU. In June, it declared that Khemraj Ramjattan would be its PM candidate for the 2020 poll.
After APNU kept delaying acceptance it held a press conference and literally demanded a deadline for APNU’s acceptance of Ramjattan. Granger and Ramjattan met and there was an announcement that the issue was solved.
Then something mysterious and strange happened and it further killed whatever credibility the AFC was left it. The AFC from the date of that fateful meeting never made a formal, public statement that in accordance with the Cummingsburg Accord, Ramjattan will be the PM candidate.
At the D’Urban Park rally to launch the 2020 campaign, Ramjattan was not announced as the PM candidate.
Yesterday, President Granger told the media that he will pick a PM after the election and asserted his right to do. David Patterson responded quickly and denounced the presidential emanation as not being in keeping with the Accord.
But Patterson issued this in a statement, ” The General Secretary said the AFC remains fully committed to the APNU+AFC coalition agreement and does and is not expecting any further confusion for the remainder of the campaign. The AFC continues to do all in its power to work towards electoral victory, as the APNU+AFC remains the best choice for the Guyanese people.
The AFC said it hoped clarity has been brought to the issue, which was carefully considered and agreed during the Cummingsburg Accord discussions.”
So if there are AFC voters out there, they will not know before the election results if Ramjattan will be the PM. Will you vote for such a party? I hope not.

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

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