Please swear in Granger tomorrow!

May 12, 2020 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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In my offering yesterday, I remarked about the attitude of ACDA on the current election disaster and will offer my reason why the organization is conspicuously and graphically silent for an organization that is emotionally and ideologically sycophantic in its relationship with the PNC.
In that piece yesterday, I looked at one pro-PNC step ACDA made while Mingo’s rotten mangoes were included in the shipment to the lunch table of the Guyanese people to be enjoyed as dessert after the main meal. I mentioned ACDA’s reverse gear in calling for a recount instead of asserting Mingo’s mangoes’ were edible. Since then ACDA’s behaviour could be described as the silence of the lamb.
You would have expected ACDA to take the lead in defence of Lowenfield’s declaration of March which gave APNU+AFC victory over the other surrogates that are embracing an APNU+AFC victory. So what is the reason? I use singular not plural because there is only one reason.
The permanent head of ACDA, Violet Jean Baptiste (“permanent” because Ms. Baptise has been the hegemonic leader of ACDA for more than 32 years) is one of the investors in Guyana Goldfields for over 15 years now and until recently held a major executive position in Guyana Goldfield. When sanctions became a definite option ACDA went in backward overdrive. It supported the recount avenue and agreed that the recount decision must be accepted.
One of the top executives of Guyana Goldfields is the predecessor to current US ambassador, Sarah-Ann Lynch. Mr. Perry Holloway has joined the gold company as Senior Vice-President- Strategy and Corporate Affairs. It is more than likely that Holloway must have information on American disposition to apply sanctions against the illegal APNU+AFC regime. It is more than a possibility that Holloway explained to Baptiste the impact of sanctions on Guyana Goldfields. Baptiste herself must have reflected on the idea that frenetic public support for rigged elections may drag her into the net of visa cancelation. The visa abrogation also takes in family members.
If we take the fear of ACDA as a benchmark then it is likely that sanctions will lead to the physical disintegration of the Granger government and perhaps the PNC and AFC themselves as political parties. For this reason, the opposition parties and independent activists are wrongly strategizing about the directions the fight for free and fair elections should go into. They should not oppose the swearing in of Granger and installation of Cabinet members.
Innocent, patriotic business folks will be devastated. Exports will be halted because all bank transactions – both commercial and central- will be grounded. Students will be unable to pay for foreign education. The spin-off will literally crush Guyana. Visa cancellation will visit Cabinet members, GECOM conspirators, the three PNC commissioners, the Police Commissioner for his partisan role so far, the leadership of the Chronicle and NCN and many high profile propagandists. The US warned that sanctions will be put on those “who benefit from fraudulent elections.” That description will apply to high level state officials.
There will be an implosion among the APNU+AFC leadership because family pressure will come into play. Mothers of the offspring of the autocrats will be asking why their young children’s future should be curtailed because APNU+AFC’s power drunkenness. These children cannot be educated abroad. They cannot visit foreign countries for holidays. They cannot travel for medical treatment. They cannot visit loved ones abroad.
The families of the business tycoons who bankroll the PNC and AFC will come into play. Wealthy folks generally live with the government of the day. That is the nature of business. They have permanent interest not permanent friends. No better example is that of Brian Tiwari. Flash back to the era of Jagdeo. Tiwari came in for cruel criticism from the then opposition for what was perceived as being close to the PPP government. Today it is said that Tiwari is a friend of the APNU+AFC government. He has done nothing that is different from millions of investors worldwide.
Questions will obviously be asked by family members. Why sacrifice, they will demand, a life time of investment for a regime that is trying to survive and will not survive and that did not win the election.
Finally, the Cabinet will implode. Many of them have foreign bank accounts. Only a fool accepts that the APNU+AFC did not engage in corruption. A businessman over lunch at his home produced documents showing me and David Hinds where a big investor and a Cabinet minister are intertwined. See my column, “David Hinds and I turned a white shade of pale,” of July 22, 2019. The best strategy available to the opposition is a Granger swearing-in.

(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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