YESTERDAY (Wednesday), I wrote on what Nigel Hughes told the gathering at an AFC meeting in New York. I quote him once more: “One of our candidates (AFC) was the reason why the coalition came out of government.”
In my piece, I looked at possible names and after examining the lack of substantial power of those persons in the APNU+AFC government and in the AFC itself, ruled them out. I speculated on two personalities that Nigel may be referring to – David Patterson and Khemraj Ramjattan.
But it cannot be those two because Nigel would face mountainous embarrassment should he name either of them because one is the current deputy leader of the AFC, Patterson.
Now, you cannot tell the nation that Patterson was the factor for the AFC’s loss of power in 2020 when he is current deputy leader. No one, not even a school child would accept that as logical.
This is so illogical that it need not detail us further. The identical analysis applies to Ramjattan. He sits in the executive and in the real decision making machinery of the AFC called the management committee. Why would he cause the party to be out of power and he is still a key player in the AFC?
Logical deduction leads you to conclude that the subject is Moses Nagamootoo. But it cannot be him since no particular politician in the AFC was a law onto him/herself that undermined the AFC’s role in government.
The AFC power-holders were each guilty in equal measure for the rejection the Guyanese people showed them when the party was in office. I am convinced that Nagamootoo played no decisively distinct role in undermining the AFC’s credibility between 2015 and 2020.
The curiosity that is born after Nigel’s announcement is why pick on Nagamootoo. He is the obvious fall-guy because he is no longer with the AFC and since the AFC is desperate to rebrand then it has to find a marketing strategy.
Before we analyse why that strategy will fail, it should be noted that Nigel will be pressed by the media and at campaign outings to name him. There is no way other AFC leaders will escape similar questioning.
For the AFC to say that a specific big-wig in the AFC contributed to the AFC’s loss of power and refuses to identify who was that person will generate anger among people. In politics you have to answer people’s queries if you are going to win their support.
I return now to the issue as to why beating the Nagamootoo drum will fail. One is that it is too infantile a strategy to pursue. People will see through it. People will be cynical about it. Guyanese will not accept the explanation that Nagamootoo was a spoiler when the AFC was in government.
Guyanese people know their politics and they know that Nagamootoo’s power was weakened by the PNC and the AFC did not react to that original violation of the Cummingsburg Accord. Secondly, in a small population like Guyana, political intrigues cannot remain invisible for a week much less a month.
It was obvious to Guyanese wherever they were in 2016 and 2017 that the PNC was running the show and did not assign the necessary power to the AFC.
Why then blame Nagamootoo? He was just as peripheral in government as all other AFC ministers. But more importantly, between 2015 and 2020, there was no AFC personality in power that emerged as an outspoken Cabinet member and was perceived by the Guyanese people as the maverick that confronted the PNC.
Ironically, if anyone in the AFC hierarchy was outspoken and did not agree with the creeping takeover of the coalition government by the PNC was Nigel himself.
Thirdly, the AFC will hemorrhage supporters if in the coming months it continues with the Nagamootoo factor. People want real answers as to why the AFC lost its way in government and strayed from its moorings. To evade those answers and cite Nagamootoo as the reason why dead meat replaced vibrancy in the AFC, will result in the AFC being laughed at.
Whoever invented the Nagamootoo stratagem lacks depth in political thinking. There is only one marketing strategy the AFC has and will have before the countdown to the national election begins. It has to come clean with the Guyanese people and admit that it got lost in the vortex of power and offer the nation a sincere apology. That may yield dividends but surely not the Nagamootoo comicality. The new leadership of the AFC isn’t new at all and may have already become dead meat.
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.
