Of the AFC, UF and WPA – submerging of AFC into the problem-prone bosom of APNU

WHAT happened to the “third force” change that the Alliance For Change (AFC) promised the Guyanese people? The AFC told us they would change the political history of Guyana. Did they forget that promise?

We ought to consider two factors as we move forward from here, as we choose to write the story of our nation’s future, from this pivotal point in our history.
The talk of the nation today is the submerging of the AFC into the problem-prone bosom of A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), with the move generating both consternation for many, and a faint kind of hope for some, with heated debates in the homeland, and in the diaspora.

The AFC launched with big fanfare just before the 2006 elections, with the noble goal of Raphael Trotman and Khemraj Ramjattan to partner in a gallant and giant step to heal the political and ethnic divide that stemmed from the split in 1953 between Dr Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham, which had resulted in the two-party system of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) and the People’s National Congress (PNC).
In a weird echo of history, the AFC’s subjection to APNU recalls the memory of the PNC’s coalition with Peter d’Aguair’s United Force (UF) in 1964 that propelled the PPP out of Government, and the coalition into power, a regime that became draconian, detrimental and dictatorial, with the UF ditching the PNC Government within three years, and many of our English settlers here, our Portugese and our elite merchant class migrating in droves to Canada, England, the US and the Caribbean. In fact, that first wave of migration opened the door to a bleeding of the brain drain out of Guyana, whereby today, we hold the world record for national brain drain.
As we ponder the ramifications of the AFC-APNU coalition of convenience, we must consider that this move in fact echoes what happened in 1964: history is Mankind’s best teacher. What consequences resulted from the UF-PNC coalition in 1964?
By 1980, the PNC Government had collapsed in its moral and ethical conduct to the tragic point that the State executed shadowy plots to assassinate our outstanding national scholar, Dr Walter Rodney.
We know many would say we cannot regurgitate “the past” and we cannot keep repeating “what happened in the 28 years of the PNC” and that “the PPP Government is corrupt and must go”. These naïve views ignore rational and balanced analysis of our situation today: the Guyanese nation must introspect, look into our hearts, and see what happened to us to bring us to where we are today. This is necessary to simply allow us to cleanse our soul and mental memory of the trauma that became the root of our corruption today, of our ethical and moral decay as a society, where a traffic policeman would sooner take a bribe than serve and protect and ensure justice is served to the citizen.
By the 1970’s, as the PNC propelled us into a sickening spiral of the most corrupt, dictatorial regime in the history of the Commonwealth Caribbean, and the UF got reduced to irrelevance, we resorted to another third political force, with a broad civic coalition forming into a political movement, the Working People’s Alliance (WPA).
The WPA became engaged in a noble and sacrificial struggle against the PNC regime, and suffered enormous hurt and pain, with its leader, Dr Rodney, assassinated, in what evidence at the Presidential Rodney Commission, now going on, is showing to be a PNC State-sponsored political intrigue.
How could we blissfully ignore the awfully terrible irony of the tragedy that has befallen the WPA?
As we see emerging from the Rodney Commission, a process of revelation that many of the political pundits ignore, the WPA faced hostile and brutal oppression and suppression under the PNC. Yet, its leaders today made a fundamental blunder, submerging itself with the PNC in the original APNU formation.
Why? The ultimate motivation that drives the Opposition, under the leadership of the PNC, is the same as 1964: obsession with getting the PPP out of Government.
Now, the WPA is on the verge of becoming irrelevant, with its role in APNU reduced to merely making up numbers, with the AFC now superseding it in power and prestige within the Opposition.
Our hearts as Guyanese must go out to the WPA. This movement suffered so much. It is as unfair and as hard-hearted for it now to be pushed aside as an influential APNU force, as when it suffered in the 1970’s and 1980’s for its role in the Guyanese fight for democracy.
Another factor we cannot escape is this APNU-AFC obsession with the removal of the PPP from Government. This is exactly the motive that moved the UF in 1964 to collate with the PNC, only to regret it.
Our experiment with third forces show two things: political coalitions have focused around the PNC, with bitter results, and those coalitions formed with the soul motive of ridding the PPP from Government.
How this obvious history lesson escapes the leaders of the AFC as they merge under APNU is puzzling.
The UF suffered in its association with the PNC. The WPA suffered in its relationship with the PNC, through two decades of suppression, spying and political plotting, and assassination of its leaders. The WPA submerged itself into APNU, and today is on the verge of absolute irrelevance, if not eradication as a Party and a movement.
The PPP formed a successful civic coalition prior to the 1992 elections, while several political fronts, including the WPA and other political movements, refusing to collate with it to form the 1992 democratically-elected Government.
How strange that the WPA has treated the PPP with such distrust and disdain. Today, the PPP Government under President Donald Ramotar is writing the amasing and beautiful story of the WPA through the Rodney Commission, even as its leader, Dr Rupert Roopnarine, suffers the Party’s slow stifling in APNU. To its credit, the UF, under the leadership of Manzoor Nadir, joined the wide-ranging Civic alliance, the Guyana Action for Reform and Democracy (GUARD) to partner with the PPP in the most successful civic-political pact in Guyana.
Why is the WPA so mean to the PPP? Dr Jagan and Dr Rodney fought together to restore democracy to our nation. The PPP has championed the cause of justice and truth for the WPA, with the Rodney Commission trumpeting the glorious history of the WPA.
A balanced look at our political history would reveal one glaring fact: Opposition political parties always seem to collate around the PNC with one single-minded goal. This goal is to get rid of the PPP Government. As happened in 1964, 51 years later, it’s happening again.
The AFC cannot ignore its own motives for this obsession to remove the PPP from Government. Former PPP stalwarts and staunch defenders, Khemraj Ramjattan and Moses Nagamootoo, make no pretense of their quest for revenge and vengeance against what they call the PPP Jagdeo-Ramotar clique.
With this eye for revenge politics, AFC leaders talk constantly of jailing members of the PPP Government and obsessive focus on allegations and accusations of corruption and nepotism within Government.
This is what motivates the AFC-APNU coalition, this deep-seated obsession with the removal of the PPP Government.
Unlike 1964, however, when, as now, we saw the Western diplomatic community sympathise with a vengeful Opposition and an unbalanced private media fraternity, as they all ganged up against the Dr Cheddi Jagan-led PPP Government, today the PPP has built a strong and successful civic engagement. Its civic pact works well, and it’s astonishing that the PPP-Civic agreement stood the test of time over two-and-a-half decades, surely a world record for Government anywhere in the world.
These thoughts become important because vociferous critics perpetuate a story of Guyana that spins the tall tale that the PPP is bad and the PNC-led APNU is good. To this day, however, the PNC has never officially apologised to the Guyanese nation for its nasty role in crippling the economic and social foundation of Guyana.
The PPP has spent the past 23 years rebuilding that foundation, and despite the many setbacks and missteps and hindrances, the PPP has taken Guyana to an envious state of socio-economic progress, with Guyana ranking high again among our Caribbean colleagues.
Our successes today are numerous and too much to expound: from Guyanese being able to travel freely to the US, with visas easily available, to our housing success and our macro-economic miracle.
A metaphoric symbol of the irony that bedevils Guyana is the choice of the WPA to hate the PPP and love the PNC. The PNC has always treated the WPA as an irrelevant and irritating political force, a thorn in its side. Yet, the WPA, with its co-leader Dr Roopnarine in the forefront, dragged the Party into the APNU snuggle, only to wake up last week to find that the politics of convenience and opportunism took a twist and now the AFC would replace it as APNU’s main PNC ally.
How could we ignore these insights and not talk of them? It’s only with hindsight that we would develop the fortitude to create our future, to exercise the foresight and wisdom to build on the wreckage of the past.
Supporters of APNU say the Party is far removed from the bad days of the PNC, and is a new, reformed political entity under its leader, Brigadier David Granger. Brigadier Granger is a bright historian and a decorated military leader, but he also needs to answer for the role of the Guyana Defense Force (GDF) in the suppression of the WPA under the PNC Government. Plus, APNU’s leadership is filled with military types. Strange it is that these folks sit around the same table as Dr Roopnarine, given the GDF and Guyana Police Force’s role in the PNC State oppression of the WPA. If the WPA has forgiven the PNC, why does it still give off a vibe of deep hatred for the PPP?
The Ramotar Government convened the Rodney Commission as a truth and reconciliation act, fully allowing for the vindication and forgiveness of those involved in that brutal time of State crime against Guyanese citizens.
But the WPA refused to work with or understand the PPP. The PPP, as the most senior political force in Guyana, operates with certain insecurities and fears, because of its history dealing with the PNC. It saw its Government removed in 1964 by unfair means, and it was kept out of major contribution to the Guyanese people for 28 years, with rigged elections denying it a role in Government.
After winning free and fair elections, it has maintained itself in Government for 23 years, with free and fair elections, having to fight against treasonous types, anarchist rhetoric and the same forces that forced it from Government in 1964, like the powerful private media, and an Opposition that succeeded in hoodwinking the Diplomatic Corps in the country. Those are the conditions that operate today, too.
But we could see the truth in the writing on the wall of our nation’s history: in the story of the WPA, we see the story of the PNC and the PPP, whereby the PPP has cared for and contributed to the role of the WPA in creating a Guyanese society free and fair, while the PNC, and now as the muscled political animal APNU, suppressed the WPA.
The WPA therefore serves as a brilliant symbol and a telling metaphor of the story of Guyana. And we must stand up for the WPA, never allowing it to be eradicated or made irrelevant or pushed into the dustbin of history. To its great credit, the Ramotar Government accomplished this with the Rodney Commission, while the PNC in APNU succeeded in reducing it to choir boy as it blessed the AFC with the same status it once did to the UF.
As with the UF’s 1964 hatred of the PPP’s ideological philosophy, the AFC’s quest for vengeance and revenge against the PPP may have blinded the “third force” into a political dance that could only reduce it to a token partner.
In an objective analysis of the facts over the course of our history, we see that the promises of the AFC, PNC and UF led our nation into turmoil and tragedy.
The PPP and the WPA stand out as delivering to the Guyanese people the crown jewel of a free people: free and fair elections. And in the civic pact of the PPP and Civic society, we see the promises of the PPP fulfilled, not into utopia, but into a thriving, fast-developing Guyana.
The WPA would learn well its own soul were it to consider its own roots as a coalition of, not political, but Civic forces into a political movement. APNU and AFC formed a lopsidedly political alliance. It must be very uncomfortable for the WPA to sit among them.
In fact, the PPP fulfilled the promises of Dr Rodney and the WPA to the Guyanese people.
We cannot allow the politics of revenge and vengeance to so warp our minds that we cannot see with crystal clarity what our history reveals: political alliances fail, while civic society partnering with a political party work, as with the PPP. The WPA would be well-advised to deeply consider what it promises the Guyanese people, now that the AFC failed to deliver its lofty promises.

By Shaun Samaroo

In an objective analysis of the facts over the course of our history, we see that the promises of the AFC, PNC and UF led our nation into turmoil and tragedy.

 

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