IF there is anything that drives greed, it is desperation, and desperation coupled with revenge and false hope are a certain recipe for failure.No politician wants to get into a position like this, but pronouncements by Moses Nagamootoo and his AFC colleagues seem to confirm the belief that his small party is an entity reserved for small-minded persons.

Nagamootoo, in his infinite wisdom saw nothing wrong in boasting to a handful of scattered supporters at a public meeting, that his AFC is capable of delivering 11 per cent of Indian votes, so that the AFC combined with APNU will be able to win the May 11 elections.
Up until Nagamootoo’s dotish declaration, the party he represents had always projected itself as a multi-racial party, and a viable alternative to the established PPP/C and PNCR-APNU.
If many do not know, just for the sake of repeating, the AFC won about 11 per cent of the total votes in the 2011 Regional and General Elections, and given their actions in Parliament and the decision to formalise their alliance with APNU, shunning consultation with their supporter, their chances of regaining 11 per cent of the votes this time around appear very bleak.
If one goes with this analysis or this forecast materialises, it would mean that the AFC might get practically only Indian votes.
But what the pronouncement does, anyhow, is to indicate that Nagamotoo will be focusing on getting primarily enough Indian supporters to give APNU so that they can win the elections.
We all know that Guyanese vote primarily on race and less on policies, but no party, with the exception of ROAR had at any time indicated publicly as a policy that it will be targeting a particular ethnic group to get their votes to win an election.
The trust has always been a multi-racial approach with the intention of attracting broad support, but this is not the focus of the AFC as their goal is to get rid of the Government, even if it means campaigning only to get PPP/C supporters.
Nagamootoo’s and the AFC’s goal is not without precedent. Not many might know that Ravi Dev, an Indian Supremacist tried very hard to turn Indians against the PPP after he was told to join the party as a member and work his way up the ranks.
This was an insult to Dev, who believe that given his “gifted intelligence”, he is only worthy of joining the PPP as an Executive, even though some of them are not of his “intellectual pedigree”.
And what he did? Knowing that the security forces are primarily made up of Africans, and there are some dissatisfied Indians, he conceived a drivel he called Ethnic Security Dilemma, and lashed together a thing he called ROAR.
And the comedy began. He ran up and down West Demerara asking residents to vote him into the Presidency because the PPP was not doing enough for them and as a great US-trained Lawyer he will do better.
Isn’t the gallivanting by Dev similar to the poppy show now being put on by Nagamootoo?
He tried desperately to become President through the PPP but failed, then boldly declared that the party will fail without him. It was this same level of arrogance and narcissism that made Dev a heavy weight to his own party, which was doomed to fail before it started, and Nagamootoo and AFC Leader Khemraj Ramjattan seem headed for the same fate.
The ROAR failure is a living example that Indians do not support anyone who wants their votes for personal gain, in this case, Nagamootoo trying to get Indian votes to give APNU so as to vote out the PPP. This will enable him to become Prime Minister of the country.
The people know of the deliberate blocking of developmental projects by APNU during the 10th Parliament, and the AFC’s failure to bring about any sort of tangible change they have promised them.
In their desperation to gain power, they seem bent on doing strange things but, as the saying goes: ‘The Gods first make mad those whom they want to destroy’.