– AFC activist Abel Seetaram

ALLIANCE For Change (AFC) member and former Region Five Councillor, Abel Seetaram, said his party will soon be covered in a “grave” as the People’s National Congress Reform (PNC/R) has absorbed and neutralised the AFC leadership, rendering it toothless.

In a letter to the press on Thursday, Seetaram said the PNC/R leaders had the AFC leadership in their hands from the inception and this was shown in simple decision-making processes, which can be judged by all and sundry.

For five years, he said “we sat and allowed the nonsense that PNC/APNU has been doing in this country as a government. I must accept that I was part of sitting down and allowing it to happen, because, as Charandass Persaud mentioned on the night of the successful passage of the no confidence motion, we all had to be “Yes Men”.
He explained that all in the AFC were made into “Yes Men” because most persons assumed that the leaders wanted to see Guyana become better, and would stand up for law and order, development and integrity.

“But it was soon known to us that they were not what we had thought or assumed they were. The PNC/APNU, before the Cummingsburg Accord was signed, had a planned agenda to destroy the AFC, and that planned agenda kicked in the very moment the Cummingsburg Accord was signed between the PNC/APNU and AFC. Many fought against it, but two people in that room at Georgetown Club are the ones who pushed it to happen. Please note that Nagamootoo was playing his deadly role behind the scene. I will deal with that later,” Seetaram reflected.
Further, he said that the PNC/R started to ensure that their plans to destroy the AFC was immediate as AFC leaders and membership worked to win government, the PNC/R was busily working to win over AFC memberships.

This, he said, continued even during the 2020 elections, pointing out that while the AFC was fighting to regain power with PNC/R, the PNC/R was fighting to take more membership from the AFC. In the 2015 elections, a prominent AFC leader was not allowed to speak at a Linden rally.

“Why? Because the PNC/R knows that that very man was making positive inroads for the AFC in Linden, and the PNC/R would have lost a lot of support in that region, which at that time they considered their very strong support base. I won’t mention the name of that man, but that is the very man the PNC/R are running to now to defend them as they are being charged for electoral fraud,” the AFC member explained.

WICKED AGENDA
The PNC/R, he said, then started to display more of their heavy biases and kept executing their planned agenda to destroy the AFC.
“I can recall that I was invited to speak at a public meeting at Stabroek Square, and when I tell the people that Burnham was a dictator and the days for dictatorship are over, I was cussed out by Michael Carrington and Neilson McKenzie for saying such in that place. In fact, I was never invited again to speak in Region Four. The issue was taken to one of the founders of the AFC, Khemraj Ramjattan, and I told him to his face that I did say that and it’s the truth that Burnham was a dictator, and let them prove me wrong,” Seetaram said.
Seetaram noted that many persons in the PNC/R, who were at the meeting, were really upset, and it was taken to their leadership, but he stood his ground and maintained that the late President, Forbes Burnham, was a dictator.

In Region Five, Seetaram explained that AFC representatives experienced daily abuses from PNC/R officials during the 2015 campaign.
“The campaign manager would turn up at public meetings and cuss out the AFC personnel because the meeting wasn’t being kept at the spot she wanted. We had to endure because our leaders were not doing anything. There is more to tell, but I will keep it there,” he said.

Recently, he said that the stance taken by former AFC General-Secretary, David Patterson, because of a breached agreement signed between the PNC/R and AFC, which would enable the AFC to have regional vice-chairs and regional councilors, is one of many the party dealt with until its demise.

“The table turned in 2020… God doesn’t sleep, and it doesn’t seem as if the PNC/R are sleeping over the AFC’s destruction. How can we, as a nation, now allow the PNC/R to talk to us about morals when they themselves have none at all,” Seetaram questioned.

He continued: “They could not even honour a simple agreement between two parties that they signed onto. How can they lead when they cannot be trusted with any promise they made, either literally or signed on to; the PNC/R cannot lecture anyone on mortals and promises because they have none.”