I READ an interview with the AFC’s chairman David Patterson on the 2025 election results and there were distinct indications that this gentleman is living in the past and refuses to see that since 2005 when the AFC was born history has moved on, Guyana has moved on and the AFC should move on and stop yearning for the glory of yesterday.

Nowhere in the interview did Patterson concede that the results were legitimate and accepted a PPP victory. He remarked that the statistics of the results are “hardly probable.” What has this man learnt from the past? Mr Patterson is not on record as acknowledging the PPP’s victory in the 2020 poll. He comes back in 2025 with the same requiem, unable to see that Guyana and the world did not believe the PPP rigged the 2020 contest and that it did so in the 2025 competition.

When you read those words of “hardly probable,” you feel people like these are not credible politicians and should not be part of Guyana’s political landscape.
Here is large evidence that Mr Patterson is a sad reflection of people who yearn for the past. I quote: “Based on our past performance, in and out of parliament, we felt the citizens would have trusted us to [sic] again to represent their interest, so of course we are disappointed.”

Which world is David Patterson living in? The consensus in the entire space where Guyanese live in or out of the land was that the AFC failed to even glance back at the dream it was born with when it got into power, and thus it began as early as 2015 the long goodbye. While it was in power, it participated in the 2018 local government elections (LGEs) and the results showed complete defeat. It did not enter into the 2023 LGEs.

Patterson told his interviewer that the AFC would be back bigger and better after an introspective period. But was there an introspective period after electoral defeat in 2020? Was there a hard look at the AFC after it lost the 2018 LGEs?

If the answer is yes, then what did the AFC learn from those two periods of soul searching? And what was learnt didn’t help in 2025 obviously. A newcomer party got 16 seats and a very small party, Forward Guyana, got a seat, while the AFC did not go near 4,000 much less 6,000 that allows for parliamentary representation.
Patterson seems to have gone in the same direction of mental aridity as Aubrey Norton (see part 1). He told his interviewer that in relation to the results, it is the AFC’s assessment that the voters said no to dictatorship.

But that makes no sense and is mindless rambling. The PPP was in office for five years, was the incumbent and won the elections with a larger parliamentary majority. In other words, the voters wanted to see Irfaan Ali have five more years.

Who or what is Patterson referring to when he said: “The people have said no to racism and cronyism and exclusion?”
He could not have meant the incumbent because the incumbent remains the incumbent after the elections. He has to be referring to the PNC that showed no rejectionist attitude to racial sermons inside APNU, which included David Hinds and Tacuma Ogunseye. Patterson could not be referring to the PPP because over the past five years in office, not one government minister spewed racial invectives.

Here is another mysterious part of Patterson’s interview. He intoned that the AFC will have to “adjust, reflect and rebuild.” Adjust to what? The answer is to the reality of a new Guyanese generation. But is the AFC capable of that?

It would have been more electorally successful in 2025 if it has adjusted to this new generation by denouncing rigged elections in 2020. Its leader Nigel Hughes had a chance to do so when he became leader, but when asked about rigged elections in 2020, said he knows nothing about that.

Here is Patterson once more: “We will seek to learn from this (2025 election results) and move forward to 2030.”

There will be no Alliance For Change in 2030. I leave David with a few lines from the theme of a Michael Caine movie from the 1970s named “X, Y and Zee,” sung by the 1970s pop group, “Three Dog Night.”  I had liked that group, and still like the song and movie.
“Going in circles, don’t really know
Where I have come from, where I will go
I’ve been through a million trips in the night
Living with shadows, looking for light
And passing the faces, how lonely they seem
Looking for traces of yesterday’s dream.”

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.