I ASSERT that one district group of the AFC had existence before the AFC held its congress in June 2024. A party group has to have active members and there are party functions to be performed year in, year out, after election for office bearers. One of the most common party functions anywhere in the world is fund-raising. Most PNC groups were inactive since 2020; all AFC district entities died after 2020.

If the AFC could fool anyone, it cannot fool me because I know many of the Georgetown-based former members. These people had gone from the AFC and had not seen the doorsteps of the AFC head office for years now. I recently took one of them to Minister Indar Deodat for employment and the minister was obligatory. Another Georgetown former AFC cadre told me I am quite free to quote him about his support for Anil Nandlall. They were both delegates. How?
Persons turned up at the AFC congress as delegates that have not seen the core of the AFC leadership for years and whose membership would have lapsed because dues were not paid for years since 2020. I was on the seawall with my dog on Sunday evening when I got a call from one of the most known names of the former Georgetown group. I would be willing to name him if AFC personnel question the occurrence of our talk.

This is a person I know very well and speak to quite often. I recently took a group of former Georgetown AFC cadres to lunch at Banks DIH outlet on Main Street. Only one of the persons at that lunch remained with the AFC and could be considered a bona fide AFC delegate–Michael Carrington. None of the members of my lunch group was still with the AFC. But they all turned up as delegates.
In the seawall conversation, I asked him how he turned up as a delegate when as a friend of his I know he had long gone from the AFC and would not have qualified to be a delegate because his dues would not have been paid for years now. He said: “They paid it for me.” I never asked who “they” were because I knew who “they’ were.

Some people in the AFC went around Guyana and literally resurrected members who had long gone and had completely lost contact with even the remnants of the AFC and made them delegates. I read where there was a Caribbean group that participated in the congress. Which Caribbean countries have a functional AFC formation?
It becomes a caricature and a national shame when an opposition party can go about contacting people who were once active and have since long gone and make them delegates. I keep carping on the subject that lack of morality in anti-government outfits will generate a cynical attitude in governmental leaders who will not listen to them because the ruling party will say and has been telling these actors– “you are in no position to criticise us.”
Look at what happened at the recent PNC Congress. The entire bandwagon was derailed through conspiracy. You expect the leaders of the ruling party to invite these people to have inclusion talks? The PNC leader and the PNC’s executive committee were not properly elected through a transparent process. In fact, the opposite occurred–the ambience, and the environment were opaque.

I keep lamenting the loss of value to Guyana’s social fabric when civil society groups and private newspapers become openly hostile to the government, and this hostility appears irrational. Precious space for dialogue between an independent civil society and government leadership is lost because the government does not accept that civil society has a collective independent mind because they are insanely anti-government. How can anyone with commonsense expect the government to dialogue with such people?
Is there any human in Guyana that thinks the government would have a discussion with the Guyana Human Rights Association? A one-man outfit that has been like that for the past 45 years. Is there any human in Guyana that reads the Stabroek News and the Kaieteur News? If the answer is yes, do you have the open mind to admit that these newspapers are a throwback to the era of the Argosy, Evening Post and the Chronicle in the 1960s? When you read the emotional hatred for the PPP that goes into the Stabroek News editorials, then those three newspapers named above look like child’s play.

The AFC is facing an impossible task to resurrect itself. It cannot be done. Time passes and the dialectics leave people behind. The AFC is dead and gone. That era has passed, and I have become much older.
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.