PEOPLE’S Progressive Party (PPP) General Secretary, Dr Bharrat Jagdeo has stated that the Alliance For Change (AFC) has failed to reinvent itself and instead, a group of “recycled” politicians are leading the party.

During a press conference at Freedom House on Thursday, the PPP General Secretary highlighted the track records of those senior members of the AFC, who served under the previous coalition administration.

Dr Jagdeo said: “This is a recycled party, a party of recycled politicians. Not a single one of them is new and doesn’t have baggage. It’s a bunch of corrupt people who have huge overload of issues…they’re yet to answer the people of this country.”

He later stated: “The AFC emerged into politics claiming that it was multiracial, that it was better than the two old political parties, PPP and PNC, that it had these great lofty ideas for the future of our country, that they brought great intellectual bearing to the task of government, that they were different, that they were different, that they were incorruptible.

“Their experience in government showed a very different light.”

Dr Jagdeo then highlighted that the political force was riddled with infractions and it was “spineless.”

“In the sectors that they managed in the economy and they were given some substantial sectors, they failed miserably and they moved away from every bit of the principles or every single principle that they outlined to people and made them attractive in the pre-2015 period because people didn’t know them well,” he said.

At its eighth national conference, attorney Nigel Hughes was elected as the party’s leader, defeating his lone opponent, Sherod Duncan.

Dr Jagdeo labelled the party’s conference as very “mediocre.”

Duncan, who last served as General Secretary, was a strong contender for the leadership position having secured 15 nominations as against Hughes’ two.
The party held its internal elections last Saturday at the Revealed World Christian Centre in William Street, Kitty Georgetown. Hughes received 149 votes, while Duncan secured only 62 votes.

Attorney Khemraj Ramjattan, the outgoing AFC leader and party co-founder, chose not to run for any of the party’s top positions and instead will serve on the National Executive Committee.

The AFC has faced several challenges in recent years, including dwindling membership. For example, 285 delegates were said to have attended its Seventh National Conference in 2022, compared to only 211 at this year’s conference.

The AFC terminated its political coalition with the APNU in 2022. The parties established a coalition to compete in the 2015 elections, which saw them win the government.

The AFC had openly complained about APNU ignoring its smaller coalition members. In December 2018, then-AFC member Charrandass Persaud voted in support of a no-confidence motion tabled by the then opposition PPP, resulting in the fall of the coalition government.

The AFC was created in 2005 by three Members of Parliament (MPs) who left other parties: Raphael Trotman of the People’s National Congress (PNC), Khemraj Ramjattan of the PPP, and the late Sheila Holder of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA).