I ENDORSE M. Maxwell’s analysis that the AFC’s primary Parliamentary agenda has to be ethnic balancing, fairness and equality (KN Feb 27). But so far, that has not been the case.
Also, I wish to remind readers that before the elections, writing in KN, Maxwell stated that Africans who voted for the AFC in 2006 would not return to the PNC (APNU) because such a move, he felt, would be retrogressive given that the PNC had no chance of winning the elections. Maxwell wrote: “it would be foolish for Africans to leave the AFC and with it a chance of bringing a new shining sun of democracy to Guyana to return to the PNC which had a record of proven failure. No party will ever consider the PNC as a partner in government which he described as a backward step”. Maxwell was dead wrong as Africans abandoned AFC and the AFC has teamed up with the PNC to punish PPP supporters. African voters remigrated to the PNC in 2011, supposedly, because they felt comfortable with Granger’s leadership and the possibility that the PNC could have won the elections, given the public division in the Indian camp represented by Nagamootoo’s departure from the PPP.
So APNU has consolidated the African votes and the Indians divided their votes between the PPP and AFC.  Where does this put the AFC with regards to its position on issues affecting Indians who constitute the bulk of its support?  The AFC had to grapple with a similar predicament after the 2006 election when Africans divided their votes to give the AFC four seats. African advocates complained that the AFC was unwilling to address African concerns and in the end Africans left the AFC and went back to their home party.
The major challenge facing the AFC is to hold the Indians while re-attracting the Africans. That is a near impossible act as the PPP learns the hard way. If the AFC does not address Indian concerns, then the Indians will return home just as the Africans did last November and the AFC will be a paper party like the WPA and other minor parties. Abu Bakr, Eric Phillip, Ogunseye and other African advocates complained that AFC was becoming too ROARian as most ROAR activists crossed over into the AFC aiding the party to win Indian votes.
The abandonment by Africans left the AFC weak. Some Indians did stay home causing the PPP to lose its majority and many among those Indians who voted AFC have been having second thoughts because of the party’s embrace of the PNC (APNU).
The Indians are deathly afraid of the PNC and for justifiably reasons given the history of the PNC, and that is why they have stuck with the PPP for over the last sixty years. The PNC/APNU protests that followed the elections, and the refusal of the PNC to accept the electoral outcome, brought back bitter memories of what happened to Indians after the elections of 1992, 1997, and 2001. So we may well have seen a temporary vote of Indians for the AFC unless the party can convince Indians that its link up with the PNC was for strategic reasons and that there would be no long term alliance or agreement on other issues.
Any further association with the PNC in and out of parliament, the AFC will disappear from the political radar like other mini parties.
The AFC has to show that it has the interests of Indians at heart. So far, it has not provided Indians who voted for them any measure of security or support for the business community that was targeted for boycotts. And the AFC’s opposition to fund the infrastructure work of the proposed specialty Indian hospital will not help its case. The AFC has no justifiable reason to oppose the hospital. Unless the AFC convinces Indians that it is not in cahoots with the PNC, Indians will return to the PPP much faster than the time it took them to embrace the AFC last November.
The AFC has a tough balancing act on ethnic interests. I do not wish to be in the shoes of its MPs who also have to take into consideration the interests of the small number of Amerindians and Coloured People who voted for it. But while the party hates the PPP and former MPs want to get back at the PPP, they have to be careful that such hate and vengeance do not flow over into hate for PPP supporters to doom the party’s future. Not every PPP proposal is bad and the Indian hospital is an excellent one.