The AFC can survive but it won’t be the AFC anymore

Jul 30, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – The AFC has announced that come December, it will leave the coalition with the PNC. In making its declaration, two factors were noticeable. One is that it said it will still seek coalition with the small entities.

Secondly, the AFC said it will not entertain an alliance with the PPP. Let’s look at the second one first. The AFC does not have any constituencies in Guyana therefore what will it bring to the PPP? It will be one of the most infamous moments in suicide if the PPP invites the AFC to have a relation.

The PPP will be saving the AFC by telling its supporters that the AFC is still something of substance so it is having a relation with it. PPP supporters will rebel at any attempt at dialogue. In declaring that the PPP is persona-non-grata, the AFC was simply engaged in infantile bravado. The PPP sees the AFC as dead meet and does not want the carcass at the doorstep of Freedom House.

The other factor is the intention of seeking alliances with smaller parties. The small parties are not going to team up with the AFC because they want the space that the AFC once commanded and enjoyed. They want to be the new party that could fertilise the soil that the AFC once sprang from.

For any of the popular small party to marry the AFC it will be committing suicide. What happens is that it will give up its own newness and promise which can bring it some kind of positive curiosity from the electorate to become second fiddle to an entity that is dying. Commonsense will be the factor that will deter small parties from even having a dialogue with the AFC.

There may be an opportunity for the AFC to survive but there is a fait accompli that is inescapable. The AFC has to change its name and leadership. When communism fell in Eastern Europe and the USSR, the communist party in order to survive the anger in each country, changed its name and leadership to survive the onslaught of the new order.

The name change and leadership purge are intricately connected. You cannot have one without the other. When the PNC went into an alliance with other parties, the objective was to obfuscate in the mind of the citizen that there was still a PNC. People began talking about APNU and the new leadership of Granger, Harmon and Roopnaraine. Corbin’s name had faded. It worked. The PNC which lost five seats in 2006 under Corbin regained it under the aegis of the APNU.

It is doubtful that the AFC under new identity and hierarchy will have an immediate impact. The memory of the enormous betrayal of Guyana’s future by the AFC will not fade from people’s mind for years to come. The AFC will get a mauling from all sides as the 2025 campaign heats up.

The smaller parties will lambast the AFC at election time saying that its depravity while in government has made people suspicious of organisations that want to position themselves as a third force. The PPP will compose its usual tirades against the AFC as the campaign heat permeates Guyana.

There will be no political sweetness between the PNC and AFC in 2025. One factor that has erased any possibility of reconciliation is the seat allocation. Once the AFC leaves in December, the PNC will not allow the AFC to have nine MPs sitting as AFC members of the House.

The PNC will be right if it takes back its nine MPs. Two reasons are at work. Morally the AFC did not deserve to have nine seats. Even in 2006 and 2011 at the height of its popularity the AFC did not get 45,000 votes which gives you nine seats. Even in 2015, the AFC did not do well in PPP and PNC constituencies so one could have said that the AFC brought about 45,000 votes to the APNU+AFC campaign.

In 2020, it was a disaster for the AFC. I opine that the AFC did not get 5000 ballots. I doubt that very much. By what madness did the AFC get 45,000 votes in 2020 giving it nine seats? The PNC should not allow the AFC to leave in December with seats that in graphic reality it did not win.

Finally, Dominic Gaskin catapulted himself into the imagination in 2020. Outside of the top guns in the PPP and perhaps three names among the small parties, he is the most admired and trusted politician in Guyana. With him at the helm, plus a name change, the AFC might survive, just might.

(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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