Can someone write a Tennessee Williams play on the AFC?

Jan 07, 2023 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – If there is any sordid moment in politics, anywhere in history, it is AFC’s performance with power, 2015-2020. I would think only one other nasty moment in politics can be compared to the self-destruction of the AFC.

It is the August 1939 Non-Aggression Pact between Hitler and Stalin. But even in this rendezvous, there was more logic and rationality than the AFC’s marriage to the PNC. What caused Stalin to sign the agreement was because the West began to court Germany alleviating some of the harsh sanctions of the Treaty of Versailles for Germany’s role in the First World War.

Stalin feared encirclement seeing the West’s moves to Germany as encouragement for Germany to attack the USSR. What Stalin did then was to buy time by signing the August covenant.

There was no sanity in the exercise of power by the AFC in the years 2015 to 2020. Power in the APNU+AFC government rested on three pillars – the Presidency, the Ministry of the Presidency and the Ministry of Finance. Those were the forums of real power. The AFC had no control or any kind of real jurisdiction.

The AFC then was virtually bankrupt as a power-holder. Here are three examples to show that since 2015, the AFC was dead meat and now that it has pulled out of the coalition with the PNC on December 31, 2022, it has become the biggest clown in politics anywhere in the world.

One- The Minister of Public Security, Khemraj Ramjattan employed Leonard Craig, one of the bigwigs in the AFC at the time, as his administrative aide at a particular salary rate. The Ministry of the Presidency rejected the proposed salary. Ramjattan and Craig settled for what the Ministry of the Presidency decided.

Two- The AFC submitted the name of one of its then prominent activists, Rajendra Bissesar for a junior minister post. The Office of the President rejected Bissesar. Three- Last year, Ramjattan told PNC activist in the UK, Norman Browne that I was annoyed with the AFC because I could not go back to UG to teach after 2015.

Ramjattan told Browne that the AFC had no power over the Ministry of Education. Those three examples are graphic evidence that there was no coalition in power but the government was essentially run by the PNC. Cheddi Jagan’s famous statement will live on forever in political analysis.

During his time as Premier of British Guiana from 1957 to 1964, Jagan wrote in his autobiography, The West on Trial, that he was in office but not in power. From 2015 to 2020, the AFC was certainly in office but not in power.

But the researcher must always include in his/her analysis that the AFC was willingly compliant in the policies of the PNC. Four top AFC second-tier leaders told me that the most vocal support for the Hamilton Green Pension Bill of 2017 was Khemraj Ramjattan.

Now that the AFC has exited its coalition with the PNC, one must remind Guyanese what AFC leaders in 2013 repeated at public meetings – that if the AFC teams up with either the PNC or PPP, it will become dead meat. Well, it chose the PNC and became dead meat.

Now enter the realm of insanity. In ending its marriage with the PNC, its accompanying statement notified the nation it may once more seek a coalition with the PNC in possibly 2024 or 2025.

But haven’t the dialectics changed since 2014 when a partnership with the PNC was a strategy to win power based on the nature of PPP’s rule? How can the dynamics be the same in 2025 when the PNC’s leadership and credibility have been badly tarnished, and the credibility of President Ali is in overdrive.

And why not a coalition with the PPP in 2024? Why in 2024 the PNC will be a more acceptable partner to the AFC than the PPP? Of course, the PPP will reject a teaming up with the AFC for the 2025 election but since the PPP has not announced that, basic strategy should dictate to the AFC that it has to probe that possibility.

Any researcher that sees a future in this country for the AFC is an incompetent academic. The idea of new party is being tested and the ABCEU embassies have been approached. ANUG, a party patterned off the original AFC is expanding.

The current AFC resemblance the tragic recurring figure of Tennessee Williams plays – the Freudian yearning to recapture past glory. Past glory never returns. That’s the law of science. The AFC will never return.

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