ALL, not most, scholars in literature agree that one particular theme runs through the body of work of Tennessee Williams. But despite his one-dimensional plot, Williams was superb in how he put different variations to the same theme, making each story different from the other.
This was his brilliance. The one-dimensional plot revolved around an older person who refuses to accept that youth and fame are gone, and that time waits for no one. The once famous person wants to be young forever and wants the lust, love and longing that he/she once had that made him/her famous.
Every play has the same theme. You can see it, you can feel it. But the subplot takes on a life of its own and the theme gets obscured by the various forms that Williams injected so brilliantly into his plays.
My favourite Williams work is not one of his plays, but novella; “The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone.” The 1961 movie was remade in 2003 but the original remains a classic.
As a political analyst, no other thought could have come into your mind but the work of Tennessee Williams when you read that the Alliance For Change has told the PNC that in a coalition between them, the AFC must have the presidential slot and if government is achieved, the power-sharing formula must be 60 percent for PNC and 40 percent for AFC.
No educated, experienced analyst of Guyanese politics can retain his/her credibility if he/she cannot see the Tennessee Williams factor in the collective mind of the AFC and that this jaded, faded superstar is living in the past where the detachment from reality is sad, tragic and pathetic.
To ask for the consensus presidency and a 40/60 formula, the AFC is telling Guyanese that it is still the glorious third party that won 10 percent of the votes in 2011 and the nation of Guyana is with the AFC all the way.
This is so, so sad. The people in the AFC are so hopelessly trapped in the past that each person in the national executive of that party needs psychiatric treatment. Which lunatic asylum did those executives escape from?
Where is the evidence of the popularity of the AFC in Guyana in 2025? In 2020, after being five years in power, they accepted a 30/70 split in governmental power should the APNU+AFC return to power.
How come after fading faster from people’s memories in 2020, the AFC thinks it is still in the memory of Guyanese, is still popular with the nation, thus it wants to have the consensus candidacy for president and a 40/60 split in power-sharing?
The political reality is the AFC is gone from people’s minds. Its current anatomy is an insult to the multi-racial platform that it had when it was born in 2005 and that allowed it to secure 10 percent of the popular vote in 2011. Who or what is the AFC today? If Khemraj Ramjattan holds a public meeting at a street corner in Berbice today, he and the technicians that set up the communication equipment would be the only persons present.
It would be interesting to hear what the psychologists rather than the political analysts have to say about this insane yearning for the return of past glories. Where is the connection between the 2011 AFC and the 2025 AFC? First, there is no multi-racial leadership in the AFC’s hierarchy today. The first four leaders on the top of the pyramid are all Africans.
Secondly, the AFC of 2025 is the AFC that participated in the attempt to rig the 2020 national election, a conspiracy that lasted five months. Thirdly, it was an AFC minister who signed the present EXXON contract. Fourthly, it was when the AFC was in power that 7,000 sugar workers lost their livelihoods. Fifthly, none of the values that the AFC embraced from 2005 to 2015 it transferred to government when it came into power in 2015.
It would take a book length manuscript to describe the extent to which the AFC became “dead meat” after 2015. It has to be an act of psychiatric breakdown for the current executives in the AFC to believe that the glory days of the party are still with them. Instead of the word, “glory” the word “gory” is most appropriate. Gory days are with the AFC not glory days.
But however much we disagree with the AFC, we cannot flippantly and cynically look at it without showing some sympathy for the collective nervous breakdown of the AFC. To say in 2025 that the AFC’s star is shining as it did in 2011 is a definite case of psychiatric breakdown. The star has been replaced by 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.