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Nov 17, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
Dr. Henry Jeffrey wrote a column headlined, “AFC: Hijacked.” He did not state in the article how the process started and who initiated it. He went on to add; “The party has been hijacked by the PNC faction lodged in the oligarchy.” So who compromises the PNC faction in the conspiracy and how is the non-PNC reacting to this?
I think Dr. Jeffrey has put it over in simplistic terms and he left out the role of David Granger in the creation of that PNC faction inside the middle class edifice of the AFC that has led it in the direction it is now travelling.
The birth of a PNC cabal inside the hierarchy of the AFC was a phenomenal chess move by David Granger. They say good chess players make cunning politicians. Older Guyanese analysts told me that it was his competence in chess that made Burnham an excellent strategist. David Granger is good at chess, and at one time was the president of the chess association.
After victory came in 2015, Granger made an astute move. It was Raphael Trotman who unwittingly described what happened. At his first press conference in February this year as leader of the AFC, Trotman explained the “coup de grâce” (as I elaborated on in several columns before) engineered by Granger. Before the AFC could select its forty percent Cabinet seats based on the Cummingsburg Accord, President Granger selected three Ministers on his own, outside of the accord.
What was intriguing is that all three selectees came from the AFC. Two victories Granger scored. He, Granger, reduced the AFC’s forty percent Cabinet range, because the AFC already had three ministers in the form of Granger’s three picks. It means in the AFC’s forty percent, they have three ministers that didn’t come from the AFC’s deliberations. The second victory was a master stroke. Three leaders in the AFC now owed Granger for his generosity, and were not likely to be ungrateful should there be a showdown between the PNC and AFC. One suspects this group is what Jeffrey refers to as the PNC faction inside the AFC.
What has been described above is not the invention of this columnist. It was the leader of the AFC that described in detail how Granger went about picking these three Ministers on his own. Words to note from Trotman’s mouth include the following; “we are the extras.” This was in reference to three picks of Granger. Trotman told the press that the Cummingsburg Accord did not include a Business Minister. And he used the word, “outside of the Cummingsburg Accord.”
Both the Office of the President and the AFC have rejected, through press releases, my repetition of what Trotman described, making reference to me only and not to Trotman. That is very strange and intriguing. The question is why a lifelong friend of the President and a co-founder of the AFC would make such statements? Surely, there has to be something there. The three ministers are the President’s son-in-law, Trotman himself and the Agriculture Minister, Noel Holder.
Now here is an inscrutability that no editor, journalist, political observer and analyst have attempted to unravel. All the important ministries have junior ministers, except Agriculture, which logically should carry a junior minister. Sources inside the AFC told me that since this is not exactly their ministry, the AFC cannot insist that the Minister accept a junior. This background then is the antecedent to the PNC cabal that Jeffrey referred to in his article.
But there is a central weakness in Jeffrey’s thesis. If you speak of a PNC faction in the AFC’s hierarchy, then you are juxtaposing it with a non-PNC section or a quintessential AFC group. No such distinction exists in the AFC’s leadership. While it could be argued that there are some AFC leaders that would not want to be seen siding against the President, so are the rest of the AFC’s kingdom. This is where Jeffrey’s PNC faction is only of academic interest.
The AFC’s edifice has virtually crumbled and its key players see their longevity as being guaranteed in the doctrine of Cabinet loyalty. But this is a mask to obfuscate the reality that the AFC no longer has constituencies with which it can use to bargain for latitude in the government. The evidence of this is ubiquitous in Guyana. It was Joe Harmon, and not the Minister whose portfolio includes the police force, that was seen signing the acceptance document for the vehicles donated by the Chinese Government. It was Joe Harmon, and not the Minister of Public Security, that spoke to the Police Commissioner about his future.
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