THS week marks the first anniversary of the failed attempt by the APNU+AFC Coalition and its planted sidekicks in GECOM to steal the March 2, 2020, general elections. The Coalition failed to deliver on its promises to the citizenry, and, therefore, turned to GECOM to extend its political life in office. I am convinced that the Coalition dug its own grave because of self-centred attitudes of governance, not to mention incompetence.

The syzygy of the Coalition – PNC (Sun), AFC (Moon), WPA (Earth), and small parties (Sea) – revolved around omnipotence and omniscience. However, the Coalition was hardly omnipresent when needed. It was missing in action. Take, for example, the no-show at press conferences as well as limited serious involvement and investment in its own support base. The Coalition developed a manana attitude towards governance, that is, a tendency to put things off for tomorrow. Things never get done because tomorrow is always tomorrow, never in the present.

Concomitant with the manana attitude was the carnival of corruption. More investigations will open the floodgates of how the public coffers were used for personal gains. What is unsettling, however, is that Transparency International claims that Guyana improved its Corruption Perception Index (CPI) scores from 40 in 2019 to 41 out of 100 in 2020.

Sigh! The required wearing of masks during the current Covid-19 pandemic might have prevented these “inspectors” from noticing that democracy, for the past twenty years, was at its lowest ebb in Guyana and the Caribbean from January 1 to August 1, 2020. A CPI score of 20 out of 100 seems more realistic. To support my position, I share with you a sort of facetious lyrical coverage of the Coalition from when it entered and exited political office from 2015 to 2020. The message here is: are you willing to give these individuals a third chance to govern Guyana?

Pseudonym (Dey Investigator): Where are you?
Coalition, Coalition, Coalition (CCC): Here I am, here I am.
DI: How do you do?
CCC: Am doing good, am doing good.
DI: Release the report on the commission of inquiry on Walter Rodney.
CCC: Nah Bhai, that would need another commission of inquiry.
DI: Release the contract with ExxonMobil.
CCC: Nah Bhai, that is confidential.
DI: We will not campaign for you next time.
CCC: Bhai, why hurry, the good life is coming, have patience.
DI: What happened to $9,000 per bag paddy you promised?
CCC: We never said dat…ayou hear da from somebody else.
DI: What is going to happen to all those sugar estates’ land?
CCC: Bhai, wait nah, the commission of enquiry on land will decide on that soon.
DI: Am I going to get any land?
CCC: Nah Bhai, it will be divided up according to ancestral rights?
DI: What about the good life?
CCC: We going to provide that.
DI: What about the green economy?
CCC: We will provide that.
DI: What will become of the estates?
CCC: We are working on that.
DI: What about salary increases for the civil service?
CCC: We will act on that.
DI: What about the No-Confidence Motion?
CCC: 33 is not the majority of 65
DI: Choose one person to Chair GECOM, nah
CCC: Bhai, wait nah, we have a lot of time to find dey fit and proper person.
DI: What about the voters’ list?
CCC: It is bloated by 200,000 names after the local 2018 elections
DI: Did you lose the 2018 local election?
CCC: No, only a small percentage of people voted
DI: When will we have the General Elections?
CCC: GECOM will decide on that
DI: Did you lose the March 2, 2020 general elections?
CCC: No, we won it four times, ask Mango in dey Field
DI: Did we have foreign interference in the general elections?
CCC: Bhai, dem Russians wanted to, but we catch dem fair, fair
DI: What about the international observers, did they interfere with the general elections?
CCC: Yeah, yeah, White, Black, Brown, all of them, are imperialists, former slave masters. We wanted to tek way their accreditation.
DI: What did they do?
CCC: They were messing with our sovereignty; they were acting like Massa days.

I am sure that I have missed many more eccentricities of the Coalition, but the ones provided here are sufficient to drive the strongest minds insane. No other political party, dubbed as a Coalition, has misused power so much in Guyana than the APNU+AFC Coalition. The evidence is here, there, and everywhere, which makes documentation easy.

Given the newly released information of corruption, controversy, and the continuation of frivolous court cases, I am convinced that the meaning and application of coalition politics, as a form of good governance, in Guyana was a farce. Except for a few individuals, most leaders in the APNU+AFC Coalition were self-centred.

It was all about themselves. They chose politics to serve themselves rather than citizenry. These individuals were mum to the reality that their actions were detrimental to public trust and democratic institutional practices. Guyana is damaged by the wrong people in the right places. The country is bleeding (lomarsh.roopnarine@jsums.edu).