Pantomime in the AFC in 2019 and 2022

Jun 08, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – For the readers of this column, I ask you now just to pull out this page and retain it somewhere at work or home so you can retrieve it when the AFC selection (not election) of leaders are announced in a week’s time. The three top spots in the AFC’s hierarchy are – leader, chairperson who is deputy leader and general-secretary who is third in line.
Between Khemraj Ramjattan, David Patterson and Catherine Hughes, those slots will be taken up. The press got it badly wrong in saying that Patterson is challenging Ramjattan. That is to give the appearance that there is some semblance of democracy in the AFC.
This is how I think it will play out. Ramjattan is going to “win” the leader slot. Patterson is going to take the chairmanship and Hughes will be general-secretary. If it doesn’t go like this, the big three will still take the three top positions. The pantomime will also have another hilarious dimension. The reason why there will not be a congress where delegates will vote in person is fear of embarrassment of the small number that would have attended.
At the 2017 congress, one of the most amusing absurdities took place. The AFC was in power with six ministers and the Prime Minister. Yet the AFC could not get an election going to elect 75 delegates from Georgetown to attend the congress at Vreed-en-Hoop. Only 67 persons turned up to vote for 75 delegates. They ended up making the 67 persons the delegates themselves. This time with the AFC being dead meat, that congress will have less people than you will find in a cemetery at 3 in the morning.
But let’s look at the pantomime at the 2019 congress. I saw a video clip of that congress and onto this day, I will say it is the most hilarious episode in politics that I have ever seen in my life and I have chalked up more than 50 years of political activism. Raphael Trotman went on the stage and announced that he was not interested in any position in the party.
What followed next is something you must see if you want to see how unfit people can run a government or country. Dozens of mature men and women began hitting their chest, banging their hands on the wall, exclaiming: “No, Raphael no, Raphael doan do dis, yuh kyaan do dis.” Trotman with a smile on his face broader than the entire continent of Africa, then told the fools in the room, “if you decide so, then so be it.” He accepted the post of chairman.
This was one of the AFC’s leaders that, at the time they were clamouring for him, had signed the renewal of an oil contract that most Guyanese feel is too much in favour of Exxon. This time Trotman is gone. He told the press he wants to concentrate on medical recovery.
Gone from that room in 2019 are many of the faces that made the AFC a reality. They have now become ephemeral moments in Guyanese history that no one will remember, ever remember. I think of such people as someone you pass on the beach, say hello to, and you will never ever think of them as long as you live.
But no one should shed a tear for them. They were life’s flawed people that deserve to be cast aside into the wilderness of nothingness. These were the people that told the world that they want to replace the PPP leaders with new leaders that can take Guyana into the future. But they took Guyana into the dark bowels of the Indian Ocean where the missing plane of flight MH 370 of Malaysia cannot be found.
How do people live with themselves when they campaigned so hard to change a government only to find that their leaders were far more demonic than those they replaced? I could never understand why these hard campaigners didn’t try to put the seven AFC members of the Cabinet onto a leaky ship and push the ship out to the river at Fort Groyne in Kingston where the Demerara River meets the mighty Atlantic Ocean.
So Trotman, Dominic Gaskin and Moses Nagamootoo are gone. I remember in August 2019, then, Minister of the Presidency, Joseph Harmon at, an APNU rally in Bartica took the hand of Moses Nagamootoo on the podium and told the audience, “Moses is political royalty.” So where is the king? As someone who studied philosophy, I find Macbeth, Shakespeare’s most absorbing play. Here’s a quote:
“And all of our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death
Out, out, brief candle”
(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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