BOTH Norton and Hughes seem to be getting advice from incompetent strategists. Let’s start with Nigel.
His latest commercial is bound to backfire on him. Someone advised Nigel to return to the saccharine era of the AFC when it appealed to Guyanese to distance themselves from the two traditional big parties (PPP and PNC) and persuaded Guyanese that the future of Guyana lies in the hand of a third party.

The appeal resonated with Guyanese. Substantial numbers in the 2005, 2011 and 2015 elections wanted a third party to be sandwiched between the two Leviathans. It worked and the AFC secured power in 2015. But the passion, purpose, persuasion and power of the AFC dissolved soon after office was attained.
There is only one word to describe the functionalism of the AFC in office – Faustian. The AFC collectively sold its soul to the devil. Then the final nail in the coffin came. This futuristic party that wanted to purify Guyana’s democracy participated in an attempt in March 2020 to resuscitate Burnhamite permanence. This party wanted Guyana to return to the era when one party ruled forever.

The new campaign commercial of Nigel is a self-destructive act. Nigel copied meticulously the appeal of the AFC between 2005 and 2011. When you listen to him, two expressions fly into your mind.

The first one is that you had your chance with that very appealing aura and you threw it away, why come back again? The second expression is, should we trust you?
You can’t help feeling sorry for Nigel. The man’s strategists are either incompetent or sabotaging him. Why would you reminisce about the AFC’s glory days when those days are about gore not glory?

You need to obfuscate the third-party emotion completely because each time you bring it up, you remind people that the third party had its day in the sun and the sun melted the collective minds of the AFC leadership.

It is best not to emphasise the value of the third party because the AFC personifies all that is malignant about third parties. Do not take my word for it. See the commercial for yourself and you will see that Nigel is living in the past. It is bad optics for the election campaign. From here onwards it would be wise for Nigel to talk about anything except the value of third parties.
Aubrey Norton does not have the same strategists as Nigel but they are equally incompetent. Aubrey fired a salvo at Azruddin Mohamed that is bound to backfire. The PNC and the AFC nurtured Mohamed during the Adriana Younge scandal. They embedded themselves in the world of Mohamed for two reasons.

One is that they needed his resources to fund the Adriana Younge saga so it could burst into anti-government flames that could bring political mileage. That happened on April 28 when scrapeheads tried to create mayhem in Regions Three and Four after the Younge post-mortem results.

Once the PNC needed the Adriana Younge factor to enliven its moribund activism it had to embrace Mohamed and in doing so, PNC constituencies saw Mohamed as their boy. Mohamed became a symbol of hope for PNC constituencies, a real ghoulish irony in the history Guyanese politics.

The second motive is that they saw Mohamed as a crucial factor in the anti-PPP game. He was Indian, he and the PPP are at loggerheads and the more he is allowed space then that would be to the detriment of the PPP. But a macabre contradiction played out.

PPP constituencies didn’t see Mohamed as a bright spot. They saw him as being tied up with the PNC. The politics of incredibleness came into play. The PNC loose Mohamed on the PPP but PPP supporters didn’t flock to him because they saw him as being bound up with the PNC.

This is really too incredible to contemplate. Here you have the PNC encouraging Mohamed to go after the PPP but instead of Mohamed enticing PPP supporters, it was African Guyanese that was flocking to Mohamed. What the PNC did then was to self-destruct. They created a creature to swallow the PPP, but the PPP was not the victim. It was the PNC that got devoured.
Norton has decided that he will go after Mohamed thus at a public meeting without naming him, he made a sly reference to Mohamed’s tax evasion scandal and concluded that the leopard cannot change its spots.

This was a subtle way of telling his audience that it was Mohamed he was talking about. But it will backfire. If the PNC begins to badmouth Mohamed, PNC supporters will not find that acceptable. They will accuse Aubrey of ingratitude. In fact, they are saying so already.

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.