THIS is the 10th installment in my series on the politics of the Mulatto/Creole class (MCC). I hope to conclude with part 11 in which I will look at the future of the MCC after 2025, when I predict the PPP will win the general and regional elections for that year.

We stopped at the point in part nine, where, after 2011, the AFC was weakened by the infighting between the quintessential MCC and the infusion into the AFC of Indian politicians and Indian businessmen. This tug-of-war for ethnic survival and class domination was carried over into the 2015 government of APNU+AFC.

The APNU+AFC regime, as a coalition between the MCC and the ex-PPP, ex-ROAR Indian personalities was doomed to fail because governments so divided do not survive. There are two theories as to why the APNU+AFC administration could not climb the ladder of social transformation.

One perspective was that it failed to understand the political economy and sociology of Guyana. It alienated the capitalist class and sought revenge on it for what PNC and AFC leaders believed was the business stratum’s ties to the PPP.

It alienated the Indian population because it felt that Indian people would not break from the PPP therefore it was futile trying to accommodate them. The APNU+AFC government’s attitude to Indians was shaped by the razor thin victory of the APNU+AFC coalition. It alienated the bulk of the African proletariat because there were no deliveries, instead there were oppressive tax increases and failure to remove obstacles to African proletarian advancement.

The second theory argues that power intoxication evaporated the spirit and qualities of the APNU+AFC regime. After long in the wilderness, the PNC was overcome with the delight in having power. The AFC was driven by the ego-tripping mentality of wanting to show the PPP that it could have removed it. Power intoxication then eradicated leadership qualities thus mediocre performance resulted.

There is a third theory which I believe has not yet been born until now. I am contending that the APNU+AFC government was fragmented and demobilised because of ethnic and class rivalry between the MCC inside the WPA, PNC and AFC and the Indian presence in the hierarchy of the AFC. In fact by the time the AFC settled down to partially run the government, its original MCC founders had defected to the PNC.

The first to downgrade his role in the AFC was Raphael Trotman. After seeing that he and two colleagues from the MCC – Dominic Gaskin and Noel Holder— were not given Cabinet portfolios by the AFC and that President Granger handed them ministerial positions, Trotman for all intent and purposes had returned to the PNC. During the 2016 local government campaign, Trotman is purported to have told a public meeting in Bartica, “the prodigal son has returned.”

The MCC leaders in the PNC and WPA sought to practice vendetta against the AFC, seeing the AFC as more of an Indian outfit. To weaken the AFC’s role in government, the ministry of the presidency was created which was a super ministry with jurisdiction over every other ministry. In the July 2015 gazette demarcating the jurisdiction of ministries, 18 areas of authority were assigned to the Minister of the Presidency and only four were given to the Prime Minister.

The PNC placed one of its own in each AFC ministry and chopped some portfolios in AFC- held ministries, for example, immigration matters were removed from Khemraj Ramjattan’s ministry. After President David Granger assigned ministries to Trotman (Governance), Gaskin (Business) and Holder (Agriculture), those were the only three ministries that did not have with each ministry, a junior PNC minister.

My theory argues that the PNC at a very deep level did not see the AFC after 2011 as a party of the MCC but a party overrun by ex-PPP and ex-ROAR politicians who in turn brought into the AFC, rural Indians from Berbice and Essequibo, who began to fill the second tier levels of the AFC.
People like Dr. Ramaya and Rajendra Bissessar begun to play important roles in the leadership of the AFC. That ethnic dislike continued after 2011 and reached a dangerous level when the PNC, WPA and AFC secured power in 2015.

One of the missing links readers of my theory would ask me to amplify is why after the MCC left the AFC and went over to the PNC and together with PNC leaders began to miniaturize the power of AFC ministries, the AFC did not object and confront Granger. This is where the power intoxication paradigm comes in.
The Indians in the leadership level in the AFC after 2015 were not concerned with the maximization of power by the PNC and the hegemony of the MCC in government. They simply loved the power they had.