Is it now Alliance for Change or Change for Alliance?

DESPITE its significance as a political party once known as the “Third Force,” and its commitment to hold a conference to meet the expectations of its dwindling supporters, the Alliance for Change (AFC) has lost relevance in Guyana’s political landscape owing to its subservience to the PNC and its fragile position within the coalition.

The media was sharp enough not to waste too much time and energy covering the party’s recently held conference. This is a message the AFC can afford to avoid.
In tandem with the above, the taxing question before us is not whether the AFC held a conference to determine and iron out some internal dynamics such as who should capture the mantle of leadership. That was a done deal in a decorative environment designed to bamboozle the public that the AFC was living up to the comity of democracy.

The real question is, would the AFC accept a corresponding reality from Guyanese, home and abroad, that its insignificance and irrelevance, known as a “dead meat” status, was a result of its own misgoverning and trampling on the innocence of its supporters.

The supporters who broke away from the PPP and joined the AFC, for instance, were shell shocked when they found out that the AFC decided to join the PNC, a party known for street violence, ethnic exclusion, and the non-acceptance of election results unless they fit its desired expectation.

The promised hope from the AFC as a Third Force and a better Guyana to its mainly new and former PPP supporters became a figment of imagination and a sacrilegious mockery of its commitment, igniting a new rise of suspicion about Guyana’s political parties. The AFC served a garnishee order to its supporters.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was when the AFC chose to close the sugar industry with no effective follow-up plan on how the sugar workers would cope with their sudden unemployment.
A source close to Khemraj Ramjattan told me that he advised Ramjattan to close the sugar industry, but he should do so with a forward-looking plan. This advice was ignored, and I can only surmise that such an awkward position was taken because the AFC failed to understand the politics and protocols of ring-fencing.

Why would any political party want to impose a blot on rural comfort and support that brought it power? The AFC was hoping that the closing of the sugar industry would have brought PPP supporters into the fold of the coalition. Whatever the theatrical intent of the AFC, it backfired since many supporters went back to the PPP, demonstrating that the AFC was more interested in wielding the big stick rather than offering the carrot. The people were never at the centre of their decision-making process.

Many pages of events can be analysed in the chapters of AFC’s political life, especially when in office, which will reveal a litany of political lamentations. In the daily run of things, when political parties are in crisis, they tend to go back to the drawing board and sort out areas of strength that would be used to rebuild confidence and propel them forward. To the AFC, doing so will be an exercise in raising fresh dust on old problems. Tell me, do you think that the AFC can recapture its glory days of the past, particularly before the No-Confidence Vote brought on it in 2018?

This is an impossibility. The AFC, whether as a partner or an individual party (I understand that the AFC will go solo in December 2022), will always be peripheral to Guyana’s politics. My reason for such a harsh declaration in one sentence is that the AFC is at variance with its once-coveted position as a Third Force political party. The more this political party moves away from this political status, the more it will fade into the political wilderness.

I do, however, believe in second chances, which underscores the title of this column. There must be some changes: The AFC must move away from cronyism, nepotism, and the weeping child of the PNC. The AFC must see political positions as service to the common good, rather than to gain political seats in Parliament or as an opportunity and avenue for self-aggrandizement.

The AFC must move away from the status/perception of charlatans and freewheelers to cultivating sound ethical and moral principles. It must speak out against the past and continuing excesses of a party it has been in bed with. If these changes, among others, do not happen soon, we will have a classic situation whereby the AFC continues to use sophistry to gain access to power, but it will lose the party they worked so hard to have. (lomarsh.roopnarine@jsums.edu)

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