AFC stirring to life

Oct 07, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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(Kaieteur News) – Out of the bitter, choking ashes of ignominious retreat and defeat, the Alliance For Change (AFC) is showing some signs of life.  Its Interim Leader, Mr. David Patterson is.  I wave a hand of encouragement in his direction and his group.  From the dark, gritty alleyways of life, it is often a positive for a man to lose everything, thought of as nothing, given up as on the way out of this world, rather than someone with a foot planted in it.  In the Old Testament Bible, there was a man named Job.  Many in the AFC should know of his ordeals, collapses.

They would have one themselves an injustice, if they paid scant attention to his rebounds.  Job came back higher than he was before.  There should be a lesson, some morsel of inspiration in this the AFC’s longest, darkest, loneliest hour.

Though difficult from some to swallow, it is my duty to lend a hand to fallen brothers, be they of PPP, PNC, AFC, WIN, or FGM stock.  It is also self-serving for unprincipled Guyanese, of which they are a great many, not to understand that it is not in me to give false cheer, to share what some desire to hear.  Whatever it is, that is what will be read here, heard elsewhere.  Thus, I say to the AFC’s David Patterson, there is recognition of someone-a leader, a man-who is gathering himself by the shoe laces to rise out of the hole into which the AFC, as a political party, walked right into, then curled into a ball to conceal its frailty and tears.  To his credit, Mr. Patterson, now a seatless, constituent-less, and homeless MP, is not taking defeat sitting down.  He and his group have been knocked down, but they are not down for the count.  I like that kind of resilience, that never-say-die spirit.  I recall Dr. Cheddi Jagan, who somehow found it within himself to keep going, to go on believing.

Full disclosure: when the hangdog Patterson of the lost and dispirited AFC band stood up defiantly, and said that the AFC will be stronger and better in the future, I shrugged, mentally slapped him down.  Go tell that to the Marines, brother.  Easy to say.  To do so (be better, stronger) is that heavy slog that calls for proof delivered every step of the way.  Show me!  Show some muscle.  Show some attitude.  Show that courageous flair of which warriors are made.  The territory to be conquered and lays ahead in the daunting stretch of five demanding years calls for some juice.  Do the interim leader and his band of decimated, stricken warriors have what it takes, what the environment requires?  That sparkling persuasive power?  That power of flickering, then surging, credibility, now at its lowest tide?  David Patterson surprised and, it must be said, pleasantly so.

In no particular order, I select some of the targets he chose and let loose with one cannonball after another.  Oil audits are a farce.  Those are nice, fat, sitting ducks.  What audit truths did Guyana get out of those?  What value did Guyanese get for all those U.S. dollars paid?  What did Guyana recover after so many speeches, and so many years?  In this country, I believe that auditors have been given dark shades, and walking sticks, and with those fateful marching orders: know where to walk, know where not to walk, where not to look.  Above all, walk in the corner, which is leaded with meaning for Guyanese.

Next, Mr. Patterson came down hard on the Exxon-Guyana 50:50 profit sharing scheme.  It is one of those cosmic mysteries that tampers with accounting and arithmetic logic so cleverly, that Exxon’s half and Guyana’s half don’t equal one.  Or, even more insultingly, where Guyana’s profit half is not in the same dollar category as the half that Exxon receives.  Illusion is a charitable description for that half-and-half profit-sharing contraption.  Some senior Guyanese may fool themselves that Guyana is collecting what resembles half, but what is an impostor.

Last, the AFC Interim Chair said what GECOM’s people may not want to hear.  GECOM has outlived its usefulness.  Personally speaking, GECOM as it stands should already have been taken to some quiet corner and put out of its misery.  Shake it up, turn it upside down, inside out, then get rid of the whole kit and kaboodle.  Start over.  Mr. Patterson and I are one there.  Less politicians, more real people.  Two problems arise: where to find the latter?  Further, I think I lost Mr. Patterson and any neighbourly feelings he may have harboured.  Nevertheless, he is rising, which I laud.  He must carry the AFC on his back.  Keep up the fire, firing away.  The AFC is fighting for its life.  David Patterson infuses some oxygen.

(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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• AFC, Alliance For Change, GHK Lall, life

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