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Apr 15, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
Since the election results of 2015, I have locked away my friendship with Khemraj Ramjattan and Nigel Hughes from my association with the Alliance For Change. Both are people I regard as special in my life. My politics is about my country. I am not a nationalist in the narrow sense of the word, but I am committed to playing whatever part I can to stop the disappearance of a county that I was born into. Guyana is a 10th rate country, but it is worth saving.
The talk all over Guyana is the reduction of power of Joe Harmon that the AFC wants. I was on the beach with my dog on Thursday morning, relaxing on one of the colossal stones that BK Tiwarie used as boulders in the rip-rap sea defence project in 2009, off Camp Street, when I got a call from Denis Chabrol of Demerara Waves. Denis wanted to record my answer as to why the AFC wants this reduction of power now.
The AFC’s main constituencies have withdrawn from the AFC because they feel and know that the Prime Minister is not second to the President, and he may not even be third in line. The AFC got this vibe from its supporters, but didn’t know how to deal with the transfer in May 2015 of Prime Ministerial power to the Ministry of the Presidency. The AFC’s uneasiness had to be subdued, because what explanation could they have offered APNU by a sudden eureka outburst? It meant an opportunity had to present itself. The Joe Harmon scenario was that occasion.
But in this game plan of the AFC born out of its retreat last Sunday, an accusation of dishonesty is in the air. What the AFC did with the Cummingsburg Accord is unusual in the history of politics in this country and maybe the Caribbean. The AFC’s section of the Cummingsburg Accord was drafted by three persons in the AFC leadership (plus the Jamaican, Alston Stewart) without the knowledge of almost eighty percent of the AFC’s executive committee (a twelve-person body).
Hours before it was to be presented to APNU leadership for review and acceptance, it was submitted to the AFC executive body that goes under the name “management committee.”
Some in the committee objected saying, ‘you cannot give it to us now; we need to study it’. But they were put in their place. A legal document accompanying the Cummingsburg Accord was never even shown to the AFC management committee. I have been in the WPA, and I can tell every Guyanese with unlimited definitiveness, if any of the big names in the WPA had done that, it would have caused a terrible fight. There was no way many in the WPA’s executive committee would have accepted that.
I doubt Jagan would have kept that from his party executives. I doubt the PNC would have done that too. You do not treat the leadership of a party like that. It is the essence of elitism. Space will not permit an explanation as to why the AFC practiced that kind of politics. That is for another column.
When there were extensive jurisdictions given to the Ministry of the Presidency, the gazette that enumerated this ocean of power generated intense debate among the media fraternity. It was Leonard Craig that showed me the gazette. After the publication of the gazette, the entire country knew Moses Nagamootoo was only the Minister of Information. When the portfolio of the Ministry of Environment was announced, the AFC took its “Minister” to OP to be sworn in, but he was rejected there and then. That was the second opportunity the AFC got to talk to the APNU leadership about power-sharing but they chose not to.
In the meantime, the AFC was creating its own untergang by its internal amorphous politics. A non-member of the AFC, Noel Holder, was awarded the Agriculture portfolio even though he had informed the AFC leadership that he was not interested in politics. Then Holder refused a request from the AFC leadership for a junior minister, which he still does unto this day.
In its war-room to decide on Ministers, three leaders from the AFC used the phone to call a certain woman with a doctorate to give her a ministry. This woman had not lifted a finger to help the AFC campaign. She refused. This was a decision that got the second-tier leadership of the AFC really mad. We castigate the PNC all the time. We talk about this and that PNC leader who does what he/she wants. But that happens in the AFC and WPA. Which one is more democratic?
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