IN my Tuesday, October 31 column that reviewed the autobiography of Moses Nagamootoo, I mentioned the incident whereby Leonard Craig, a senior figure in the AFC, during the tenure of the APNU+AFC administration, was fired from the position of head of the National Broadcasting Authority (NBA) and Mr. Nagamootoo as Prime Minister had the portfolio that covered the NBA and did not know that the decision was taken to fire Craig.

As a response to that, I got several emails asking me if I can give more details. I think the reason for the curiosity is more about Nagamootoo than the incident itself. I can understand how people feel about Nagamootoo because as Prime Minister they figured that on such a small issue why Nagamootoo was overlooked by PNC figures in the government.

I have detailed knowledge of what went on, but it would take up too much space, so I will be brief and then look at a statement Dominic Gaskin made on the Freddie Kissoon-Gildarie show in relation to how the AFC failed in government. First the broadcasting incident.

Craig was Chairman of the NBA and had a running battle on the board with Tony Vieira. There was a public spat between the two. Vieira at the time was with APNU. The Ministry of the Presidency took the decision to side with Vieira and the decision was made to fire Craig as Chairman. Craig told me he confronted Nagamootoo who admitted to him that the decision was not his. I would not print here what Craig said to me about Nagamootoo’s character.

The nature of the coalition in government among the PNC, WPA and AFC constitutes a story that is so surreal, incredible, unbelievable and degenerate that it is almost impossible to do a scholarly study of it.
The peculiar behavioural output of these three parties in a governmental coalition is extremely rare in politics, and we are unlikely to see such a repetition anywhere in the world in the future.

Even when governments are single party administrations, within the ruling party itself, there would be tempestuous disagreements between senior party officials that result in change of policy.
Logically then, there should be more upheavals between coalition parties in government. After Cheddi Jagan died, the post 1997 PPP government had disagreements on policy. The same in the PNC after Burnham died.

After Eric Williams passed away, the government of the People’s National Movement had constant bickering that led to the weakening of the party. Also in Trinidad, when the United National Congress under Basdeo Panday came to power, acidic internal dissention led to the fall of the government. The New Jewel Movement in Grenada had so many internecine disagreements over policies that it led to bloodshed.

It is expected along the lines of human nature for coalition parties to quarrel all the time and divorce becomes the order of the day. That is a political law in coalition governments. The exception is the PNC, WPA and AFC coalition in Guyana- 2015-2020. This was no coalition but a PNC dominated regime.

Today, only one man from one of the contributing parties explained his position. Dominic Gaskin announced on the Freddie Kissoon-Gildarie Show that the mistake the AFC made when it was in power was that to protect the coalition government it forsook its own core values.

Coalition parties do not do that. In the history of coalition governments, the contributing units dissolve the government when issues fundamental to their raison d’être cannot be resolved. In the case of the WPA and AFC, their inner beliefs on which rest their raison d’être were constantly violated by their senior partner in the government, the PNC, and they sycophantically accepted the loss of their identity.

Some examples should suffice. A party like the WPA should never have accepted the dissolution of the amendment to the marijuana law. Clive Thomas wrote several books on the sugar industry yet as Chairman of GuySuCo was not consulted on the closure of the estates and accepted the denial of severance pay to the sugar workers who had to go to court to get it.

For its part, the AFC went along with the Hamilton Green Pension Bill. It accepted Leonard Craig’s dismissal even though Craig constantly informed his boss, Nagamootoo, the victimisation he was facing from the APNU people in government. If as Gaskin explained, the AFC sacrificed its core values to protect the coalition in power, then the AFC agreed to commit suicide. There is no other example of such coalition madness in politics the past 200 years.