AS the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) prepares for its Sunday campaign launch at the Square of the Revolution, the party faces an unprecedented crisis of credibility that threatens to overshadow any policy pronouncements or electoral promises.

What was meant to be a triumphant beginning to their 2025 electoral campaign has instead become a desperate attempt to salvage what remains of a political movement haemorrhaging its most prominent figures.

The timing of this launch could not be more precarious. With general and regional elections scheduled for September 1, APNU finds itself in the unenviable position of having to present a unified front, while simultaneously dealing with what can only be described as a mass exodus of key party members.

The irony is stark, as a party that once prided itself on being a coalition of political forces, now struggles to maintain even the appearance of internal cohesion.

The list of defections reads like a political obituary. Parliamentarian Geeta Chandan-Edmond; Region Four Chairman Daniel Seeram; Vice Chairman Samuel Sandy; attorney James Bond, and former APNU+AFC Minister Sydney Allicock have all abandoned ship, endorsing the governing People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) instead.

Even more damaging was the revelation by Sandy, who served as APNU+AFC’s Campaign Manager-Operations for the East Coast of Demerara in 2020, that he possesses evidence proving the coalition lost the 2020 elections—a fact he claims the party leadership knows but refuses to acknowledge.

This exodus is not merely numerical; it represents a fundamental breakdown in trust and credibility. When your own campaign manager publicly contradicts your electoral narrative, when respected legal minds like James Bond distance themselves from your leadership, and when regional strongmen like Seeram and Sandy publicly endorse your opponents, the message is clear: the party has lost its way.

Adding to APNU’s woes are persistent accusations that the party has resorted to artificial intelligence to generate policy positions, a charge that speaks to deeper concerns about the party’s intellectual capacity and authenticity.

This controversy gains particular resonance given President Ali’s recent warnings about the dangers of AI-generated content in political discourse, in which he emphasised that “information disseminators are not relying on facts, science, and those things.”

The accusation of AI-generated policies is particularly damaging because it suggests a party devoid of genuine vision or authentic leadership.

When combined with the PPP/C’s criticism that APNU and AFC are “focused on negotiating political positions rather than national development,” the picture emerges of a political movement more concerned with power-sharing arithmetic than with governing.

Perhaps most embarrassing is the manner in which APNU has attempted to revive its electoral fortunes by poaching members from the very Alliance For Change (AFC) it failed to form a coalition with.

The appointment of Juretha Fernandes as prime ministerial candidate, alongside the defections of Sherod Duncan and Deonarine Ramsaroop, represents a stunning admission of failure. Here is a party that spent months in failed negotiations with the AFC, only to resort to picking off individual members when those talks collapsed.

The irony is delicious, as APNU’s campaign launch will prominently feature faces from the AFC, the very party that told them a Norton-led coalition would lack “national appeal and the likeability necessary for national mobilisation to be victorious at the polls.”

When your prime ministerial candidate comes from a party that publicly questioned your electoral viability, what does that say about your own political talent pool?

Also, when your own members describe you as “lost” and having “more factions than under any other leader,” the electoral prospects are grim.

As APNU takes the stage at the Square of the Revolution this Sunday, all eyes will indeed be on the party but not in the way they hoped. The launch will be scrutinised not for its policy announcements or electoral promises, but for what it reveals about a party in terminal decline.

The presence of AFC defectors on stage will serve as a constant reminder of APNU’s failure to build meaningful coalitions, while the absence of departed stalwarts will underscore the party’s credibility crisis.

The cruel irony is that APNU’s campaign launch, meant to project strength and unity, will instead highlight the party’s fundamental weaknesses. In politics, as in life, timing is everything and APNU’s timing could not be worse.

Launching a campaign while haemorrhaging support, defending against accusations of policy plagiarism and promoting defections from a party you were in negotiations with to form a coalition, is not a recipe for electoral success. Sunday’s launch will not be a beginning. It will be a wake.