AFC’s token leaders are PNC satellites
The joint Opposition, comprising the APNU and AFC, is doing irreparable harm to Guyana and Guyanese with their continuous destructive acts and utterances. With the PNC, this is a historical reality and a trademark leadership stamp that has dragged this country through destructive maelstroms time and again.
However, what is shocking and unbelievable is the positions of those who were once ensconced deep within the ranks of the governing party. They were part of the planning of developmental programmes, through the formulation of PPP/C Manifestos that they are viciously attacking today. They are joining with the party that once dragged this nation so deep into an abyss that it was unfathomable that any strategy could have restored the hopes of Guyanese and put this country back on a developmental track that facilitated economic growth and significant rankings in international developmental graphs.
But Dr. Cheddi Jagan dreamed dreams and envisioned strategies that were all documented in successive PPP/C Manifestos; and so the seemingly unachievable was achieved, like a miracle, and Guyana rose again to a level where it is ranked as a middle-income economy – and here the significance of the message of Easter and rebirth of hope is the imprimatur stamped on the achievements of the PPP/C Government for this nation that catalyzed rebirth of hope in the Guyanese people.
The PNC by itself could never have taken away that hope: But the AFC has empowered that destructive party to once more ride on the backs of the Guyanese people like the legendary albatross of ‘The Ancient Mariner’ fame.
Now Raphael Trotman is right back in the ranks of the party in which his political roots are implanted; but the PPP/C castoffs are trying to find relevance by joining with the very people who have oppressed and shunned them to destroy the Government of the party of Dr. Cheddi Jagan, that great patriot who carved the paths to Guyana’s freedom from colonizers and dictators. They are mere tokens being used by the PNC to derail all the developmental plans crafted by Dr. Jagan and honed by his successors and loyal party members
Khemraj Ramjattan was promised leadership of the AFC on a rotational basis, but Trotman has never relinquished that position, until his (alleged) deal with the PNC propelled him into the Speaker’s chair, where he continues to do their bidding; even while they rejected Nagamootoo for that very position, after he had betrayed the PPP/C for ‘a high place’ promised to him by Trotman. Today Nigel Hughes as Chairman has more power than Ramjattan; but both Nagamootoo and Ramjattan have no other political relevance than to support the PNC to destroy the PPP/C Government, even if they drag the country back to the dark ages of pre-1992 in the process.
Both men are merely bitter, venomous nonentities in the AFC who can make no decisions, but are left to do the dirty work of the PNC puppeteers who are drawing their strings.
Both Moses Nagamootoo and Khemraj Ramjattan wanted the presidency, and the rejection of their candidacy by the PPP/C sent the self-appointed deliverers into the embrace of the AFC, with the promise of co-leadership on a rotational basis (which did not happen as per Ramjattan’s expectations, but was accorded to him by default when Trotman became Speaker) “a high place” and a Vice-presidency. Both aspiring presidents are today holding, in local parlance, “larwah”. Nagamootoo was not even given the Speakership position to which he aspired because Trotman is believed to have cut a secret deal with the PNC to reject him in return for AFC support.
However, PPP defectors to the AFC have to be blind not to recognise the trend. Gaumattie Singh was denied a parliamentary seat because Trotman chose Chantal Smith instead, Trotman has always been leader of the AFC since inception, despite the co-leadership premise on which it was founded, with Ramjattan always having been left floundering in the cold, and Nagamootoo was denied the Speaker’s position. Guess who holds both positions coveted by Ramjattan and Nagamootoo? Trotman, of course, because he has been revealed to have been holding secret talks with the hierarchy of the PNC, the beast out of whose belly he emerged; and ironically, it is the PPP/C support base that is being eroded to ultimately empower the PNC, with funding provided by former PPP supporters in the diaspora and the local business world.
The relevance of this duo will come to an end once they are no longer needed as conjunctive satellites to give the PNC power to destroy the PPP/C developmental programmes. They know their history well and should remember what happened to Vincent Teekah and the United Force.