-due to poor health
THE SMALL Alliance For Change (AFC) prime ministerial candidate, Sheila Holder, 65, may very well bow out of the political race, with doctors describing her health condition as deteriorating, according to a source close to the Party. Word is that Holder has been advised to avoid rigorous workloads which could aggravate her present condition.
In February this year, Holder had to be rushed to a city hospital after taking ill suddenly. Before that bout of illness, she had to undergo surgery for an unrelated health condition.
Ever since, she has been conspicuously absent from Party activities, and the few she did attend, one could not help but notice her unusually brief presentations.
The official said Party executives are already talking about a possible replacement for Holder as the Prime Ministerial Candidate. “…the fear is she may not want to publicly admit she is not healthy enough for an elections campaign, but most of her comrades fear the worse, should she persist on the [campaign] trail,” the AFC  source disclosed.
Party Leader, Raphael Trotman cited ill health as his reason for declining selection as prime ministerial candidate under running mate, Khemraj Ramjattan, who was selected Presidential Candidate for the 2011 elections.
Trotman and Ramjattan have been in a leadership tussle ever since the Party’s top-brass reneged on a rotation agreement which would have seen Ramjattan take over the AFC’s helm as leader.
Sources within the Party say Trotman’s faction kept insisting that Ramjattan was unsuitable to lead the AFC, while Ramjattan’s accused the Party’s prime movers of using alienation tactics. The AFC has been badly hurt by the infighting, and has not recovered since.
Businessman, Peter Ramsaroop, who has resigned as AFC’s Chief Executive Officer and withdrew his membership of the party, publicly expressed his displeasure at Ramjattan’s leadership.
Trotman, meanwhile, has been exploring his options for an opposition alliance for this year’s general elections. A former senior member and parliamentarian of the opposition PNCR, he defected to form his own party with Ramjattan, a former senior member and defector of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP).
Earlier in the year, Trotman accused PNCR Leader, Robert Corbin, of being in secret talks with President Bharrat Jagdeo on a shared governance agreement for the 2011 elections.
Trotman stoutly declared then that the AFC was not discussing an alliance with the PNCR, but Corbin refuted this saying that the two parties have had several meetings, discussions and consultations on the issue.