Aubrey Norton had no idea at the beginning of 2020 that he would one day be the leader of the PNC, yet Norton opposed nine seats being awarded to the AFC going into the 2020 elections.
Norton, at the time, was not in the war room of the PNC, but he knew the essential PNC leadership was no longer enamoured with the AFC.
Given Norton’s feelings on the AFC in 2020 and given the way he always felt about Raphael Trotman and Nigel Hughes, even Nelson Mandela, if he was alive, could not persuade Norton to enter into a meaningful covenant with the AFC.

The day Norton became the leader of the PNC was the day any electoral union with the AFC disappeared. Before we enter that discussion, let’s look at the antecedents of the dead 2025 dialogue.
This lack of interest in the AFC extended to David Granger himself. Granger and top PNC leaders felt that in the 2020 election the AFC should not be treated with any importance. Two approaches were adopted to sideline the AFC. One was the PNC’s acceptance of Moses Nagamootoo to be retained for the PM post.

Granger insisted even though he knew that the AFC wanted Ramjattan to be the PM candidate. Granger persisted with Nagamootoo with one expectation in mind: that the PNC will insist and the AFC will back down because the AFC was always afraid of losing power and have the PPP laugh at them.

It did not happen this time. The marriage between AFC and PNC in 2020 had become so strained that the AFC was livid at the thought of Nagamootoo being picked by Granger to be PM candidate. But Granger was not to be outflanked. Granger had a plan to minimise the AFC in the 2020 campaign.

APNU brought in a white British consultant and the foreigner’s advice was that the 2020 campaign must concentrate on the man, Granger and no one else. Granger then told the AFC that this was the strategy.
After that man’s advice, the PNC did two things. It was reluctant to have any AFC speaker to be a featured presenter at campaign rallies. The AFC was relegated to ordinary public meetings.
Secondly, the PNC decided against campaign posters having Ramjattan’s visage next to Granger’s.

After the August 2020 defeat, PNC leaders were assertive in their demand that the AFC must not get nine seats. Norton was one of those who held that view. Granger is a strange man. He defied PNC leaders and unilaterally decided on the nine seats.

Granger said it was a principled arrangement with the AFC, and it should be honoured. Whether you like Granger or not, he – and he alone – insisted that AFC get the agreed nine seats because it was the principled thing to do.

By the time Granger and Joe Harmon rode off into the sunset, the PNC-AFC thing was done with forever. The coalition was a thing of the past. It so happened that Aubrey Norton became leader and the song of a PNC- AFC election alliance was sung out. It is none other than Nigel Hughes that said all along that the PNC was not interested in a 2025 election unity team.

Hughes knew that because of the way the PNC was behaving. We come now to the paramount reason why the dialogue collapsed.
Norton believed deep in his heart that the AFC is dead and is looking for resurrection through an alliance with the PNC. Norton believes that any formula the AFC presented – 50-50; 60-40; 70-30, it will result in the preservation of the AFC and the PNC has no business in keeping the AFC alive.

What Norton and other PNC leaders wanted was a unity team but without any conditions stipulated by the AFC. This meant the PNC would participate in the election with the AFC but it begins and ends there – there will be no written document about what the AFC should and will get.

Before Nigel Hughes became head of the AFC, there were no whispers much less open words in the AFC that there would be a coalition. It was Nigel Hughes who promoted the unity slate after he became leader.
As Juretha Fernandes said when the talks collapsed, there was never any decision by the AFC that the AFC and PNC would negotiate a consensus candidate.

Unfortunately, Hughes hardly knows anything about politics. He put two items on the table that up to this day the ire of Norton is still boiling in reaction.
One is a percentage formula, the other is a consensus candidate facilitated by the AFC but the person must not be Norton or from the PNC. No dilution of those two proposals could have mollified Norton. He was done with the AFC.

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.