Gambit: AFC setting a trap for the PPP

Aug 26, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – The PPP ruled Guyana from October 1992 to May 2015 during which time, Region Four elected its chairman from the PNC. In 2020, the PPP won the national election and the traditional pattern continued – Region Four elected a PNC chairman.
Most independent analysts who study the Guyanese sociological landscape will put the PPP down to winning the 2025 poll. Speaking for myself, I believe given the horrific, negative consequences of five months of attempted rigging by the PNC in the 2020 poll, the ambience in 2030 is going to favour the PPP.
A number of reasons could be cited. One, is that the physical and financial weakening of the PNC will be a protracted process going beyond 2030. Secondly, only a few small parties will remain from the 2020 battle and will not expand at the required rate to give the PPP headaches in 2030.
The decadent, degenerate nature of the post 2015 AFC will continue to create nightmares for small parties. It will take a long time for citizens to trust a small party no matter how fast it gathers steam, and no matter how charismatic and smooth-tongued are its leaders.
Thirdly, the stench from March, 2020, will permeate this country’s political landscape for a long time to come. People from the Indian and Amerindian communities are going to vote solidly for the PPP because the nightmare of 2020 will haunt them when voting day comes around.
Fourthly, by 2025, an impressive percentage of African Guyanese should be comfortable with the PPP’s performance because the treasury by 2024, 2025 and 2026 should have petro-dollars to spend. It is highly likely that some of those petro-dollars will be assigned for the enhancement of African communities.
Against this background, it makes no sense, the PPP having anything, even remotely, to do with the AFC. The PPP does not need the AFC for anything at all. There is nothing the AFC can do or can offer the PPP that the PPP will find interesting. It makes no sense therefore, for the PPP to show any interest in the little fight between the AFC and the PNC in the Region Four council. It would be detrimental to the PPP’s post 2020 image to be seen having anything to do with the AFC.
There are some commonsensical questions the PPP leadership must ask itself about the intended no-confidence motion (NCM) the AFC is planning to table against the Region Four chairman, Daniel Seeram. Some of these questions are:
-Why Daniel Seeram in 2021 and no other PNC officials from 2015 to 2020?
-Why there wasn’t an NCM in April 2016 against Minister Joseph Harmon when at an AFC retreat at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre, the AFC demanded a curtailment of the vast state jurisdiction of Minister Harmon.
Why the very two men – Amarnauth Chinkan and Neilson McKenzie – who are behind the NCM were never reported in any section of the press of expressing annoyance, disgust or rejection of the thousands of manifestations of abuse of power when the AFC was in power.
I know the two AFC names linked to the NCM. Mr. McKenzie is as close to being a democratic as Trump’s far-right supporters. Mr. Chinkan is one of the strongest supporters of Khemraj Ramjattan and is someone whose words to me over the past year I find highly misleading. There are three questions the PPP councillors in Region Four should ask the AFC councillors.
1 – Did Charrandass Persaud take a bribe?
2 – Did they agree with the AFC’s expulsion of Charran.
3 – Do they believe the APNU+AFC won the 2020 election?
What has the PPP got to gain from voting with the AFC for the NCM to topple Seeram? More importantly is the question what the AFC stands to gain? Should the PPP vote with the AFC to remove Seeram, there will be more political gain for the AFC than the PPP. First, in the forthcoming local government election, the PNC and AFC are contesting separately. The Seeram ouster will be used by the AFC to appeal to voters to give them a chance.
Secondly, the Seeram removal will be a lifeline thrown to the AFC by the PPP to deceive citizens that the AFC is willing to visualise political developments on the basis of principles and democracy. Obviously, the plan is to resuscitate its political existence.
On the other hand, should the PPP vote with the AFC to dethrone Seeram, citizens in general across Guyana may be angry with the PPP for even talking to the AFC. The AFC became, rotting, fetid, dead meat after 2015. The PPP may be wise to let the meat fully dissolve into nothingness.

(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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