ALLIANCE For Change Leader Mr. Raphael Trotman lost little time in rushing to the defence of the Amerindian People’s Association (APA), the key player in organising a gathering of Indigenous leaders in Georgetown earlier this month from which was issued a statement deriding the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS).
In his letter published by the Kaieteur News Monday, March 15, he carefully did not mention the APA, which declined formal invitations to be part of the extensive countrywide consultations on the LCDS and then proceeded to convene a gathering of some leaders almost a year after to try to discredit the strategy.
And he too joins the sniping, conveniently ignoring all the public commendations of support for the LCDS consultation process from the World Bank, the International Institute for Environment Development (which officially helped to oversee the process) and other stakeholders.
Trotman’s excursion is par for the course for politicians trying to score political points by trying to shoot down a strategy which patently holds so much potential for the development of Guyana for generations to come.
His reference to bungled implementation of the LCDS is baffling when the strategy has not yet been implemented.
But like the APA which claims it supports the LCDS in principle but derides it, Trotman seeks political mileage and publicity without specifically saying what his party opposes in the LCDS.
The AFC had its opportunity in the National Assembly when the LCDS was up for debate and the APA stayed out of the national consultation process.
How then do they expect to be taken seriously and not to be seen as playing the kind of politics that does not do much for the national cause?