WE have two and a half months before the nation votes. In those two months, I will analyze the absurdity in Guyanese politics in the person of Azruddin Mohamed that has few parallels since Independence; maybe no parallels at all.

I still have to get over the reality that Azruddin Mohamed is not only in politics but wants to lead the country that I have made humongous sacrifices for. I cannot and will not accept that. It is the height of absurdity, but more on that later. Let us analyze the exodus of big names from the AFC and PNC.

Any political analyst who didn’t see the exodus from the PNC coming is incompetent. It began with the mistreatment of Roysdale Forde and Amanza Walton-Desir (AWD) at the PNC congress last year. Both of them made a challenge for the party leadership. If that election was not viciously corrupted by conspiratorial Shakespearian plots and sub-plots, either one of the two would have won.

If I was pressed for an answer, I think AWD would have beaten Forde the factors for which cannot be laid out here since space would not allow it. Both Forde and AWD then backed away. You have to listen to Forde when he described on the Freddie Kissoon Show how tampered was the process of the PNC congress. It was a rigging machine at work. Daniel Seeram, on the same show, said the turning point for him was that fraudulent congress.
Forde and AWD were destined to leave the PNC and for one banal reason, we find in human beings. It goes like this – “If I cannot be allowed to contest my party’s leadership, then what purpose do I serve in that party.” Forde and AWD no doubt have said that. For others, the PNC in 2025 is not the PNC they loved and embraced. The chief proponent of that thought is former Georgetown Mayor, Ubraj Naraine.

We skip across to the AFC. You do not have to like Sherod Duncan to appreciate if he helped an old lady to cross the street. Under his tenure as General-Secretary, the AFC was kept alive because after the loss of power soaked into the AFC three years after the APNU+AFC lost office, the AFC became dormant. Duncan and Juretha Fernandes helped the AFC to limp along.
With the illness of Raphael Trotman, the mental fatigue of Khemraj Ramjattan, and the disinterest of David Patterson from 2021 onwards, Duncan felt he was entitled to leadership. And so he entered the race with the feeling that he had no competitor. Now the entry of Nigel Hughes deeply affected Duncan and Fernandes.

If it was any other AFC personality, the bitterness would not have been there. Duncan and Fernandes couldn’t reconcile themselves to Hughes because Hughes rode away years ago and did so with a declaration – he was finished with politics. In announcing his candidacy for AFC leader, vexations riveted Duncan’s soul. Hughes couldn’t muster group endorsements. Nigel contested the process after he secured a nomination from a non-functioning group in the CARICOM region.

What political analyst must understand is that for Ubraj Narine, Daniel Seeram, Roysdale Forde and AWD, Norton is not the moral, legitimate, legal leader of the PNC. Their politics is imperceptibly driven by that thought. Across to the AFC, Duncan and Fernande felt that Hughes used his money and the backing of the Mulatto/Creole class to impose himself on the AFC.

Hughes, of course, became insensitive from day one after victory. He runs the AFC almost ( note “almost” ) as a one-man show. He features in everything the AFC does and Duncan is hardly projected. Hughes rubbed salt in the wound; he catapulted Terrance Campbell into the equation by anointing Campbell as a political personality eligible to be the consensus candidate.

This was straight out of the playbook of race and class. Campbell may know how to spell the word politics, but it is doubtful he knows anything about politics and is not too far behind Azruddin Mohamed in their limitation of political knowledge and political commonsense. It may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back for Duncan when Hughes held a press conference and invited a number of political parties to speak at the site of the accidental drowning of Adriana Younge and Campbell turned up as one of the main speakers. He was the only person not representing a political party.

How did he get there? Hughes arrogated to himself the right to bring whom he wanted because he was the AFC’s leader. So Campbell spoke and not Duncan, not anyone from the AFC. The PNC is Aubrey Norton. The AFC is Nigel Hughes. More exits will follow AWD, Fernandes and Duncan.