Dear Editor,
The Alliance for Change feels that by parting ways with the APNU that it can salvage the damage done to the Guyanese people, especially its former members and supporters. But it is apparent that they want to restore their own damaged image. Some within the AFC realised this and as early as 2021 some of the Party’s Executive had received a 17-page proposal which recommended that the AFC leave the coalition with the APNU. Did this proposal come from the financiers of the party?
This proposal was put to the AFC’s National Conference this year and at the end of that Conference it was reported that it was agreed by the new Executive body to break the relationship this year end when the Cummingsburg Accord which came to life on Valentine’s Day 2015 would have come to an end. The voice of the financiers had decisively spoken or so it seemed. According to Mrs Catherine Hughes, the Chairman of the AFC, there will be no renewal and the Party will focus on rebuilding and walking on its own feet and getting back on the ground, however, it will be open to coalescing with other parties.
I could vividly recall that the AFC had proffered many reasons why the coalescing with the PNC was necessary. The main reason being the removal of the ‘corrupt’ PPP/C Government so that Guyana could achieve its full potential, given its huge natural resources. According to Ramjattan, the PPP/C was siphoning off more than 20 per cent from each contract awarded. Guyanese has witnessed that the coalition during its tenure in Office became the most corrupt Government ever and the Reserves, the Consolidated Fund and the Treasury were ruthlessly and repeatedly raped. Corruption became the order of the day and the Auditor General’s Report is replete with factual evidences. The AFC’s Natural Resources Minister, Trotman gave away of our oil patrimony, a ‘legacy’ which the current Government is now bombarded to renegotiate. Where is Trotman? Has he gone back to the PNC mission accomplished? Where were these voices which are so vociferous now? Was the AFC blind at that time? The AFC presided and gave approval to all of these nefarious acts. The AFC even approved all the constitutional breaches which Granger perpetrated.
I could also distinctly recall that the AFC for a number of years after its formation in 2005, repeatedly lambasted the PNC for rigging the elections from 1968 to 1985 and mentioned volumes of the atrocities committed by the PNC. Ramjattan and Nagamootoo were at their oratory best at public meetings and no one would have envisaged that a day would come when these two very persons would dumbly stood by and witnessed for 5 months the barefaced attempts by the PNC to rig the 2020 elections. They became part and parcel of what they had condemned: corruption, cronyism, mismanagement and squander mania, and eventual an attempt to rig an elections. It was all about money and power, never the people and the country. Now that the rigging failed, they are now singing a different tune. Guyanese want to hear the AFC condemning this rigging. But this will never happen.
Now they want to ‘rebuild’. Is this not an admission that they destroyed their founding principles? The AFC wants to ‘walk on its own feet’. Is this not an admission that they were walking with the ‘feet’ of the PNC? The AFC wants to get ‘back on the ground’. Is this not an admission that the AFC have lost contact with their membership and support base? Is this not the ultimate act of betrayal? They enjoyed the corrupt life offered to them by the PNC on a platter completely neglecting the people of this country and nearly plunged this nation into a dictatorship once again and now they are begging for acceptance by the people they trampled on and betrayed. The real Ramjattan and Nagamootoo have been exposed and both being completely pleased with their ignoble acts and omissions, the latter has crept and disappeared into oblivion. They have lost all their ideals and principles which Guyanese had witnessed when they fought the PNC dictatorship.
Those whom they betrayed would like to be given the true reason for the breaking of that unholy alliance with the PNC, but this will never be forthcoming since the main reason is to once again give parliamentary co-operation to the PNC to make this country ungovernable and frustrate the developmental thrust of the PPP/C Government. History is repeating itself. This was what transpired after the 2022 elections and if given that opportunity it will happen again.
The Alliance for Change is not capable of change and it should never be given an opportunity to resurrect. This time the result will be more devastating and catastrophic.
Yours sincerely,
Haseef Yusuf
