MS. CATHY Hughes of the AFC lamented in a television interview with a pro-opposition station why Azruddin Mohamed was electorally successful and why the AFC was devastated. Everything she said about Mohamed’s success was inaccurate. Everything she said about the electoral loss was equally erroneous.
I read what she intoned, and I thought I would reply for two reasons. One is to remind Guyanese what people like Cathy Hughes, and the AFC are like, and secondly, to add my two cents so people can gain knowledge about our failed politicians.

First Mohamed. Hughes noted that “the whole concept of a philanthropist who definitely had the financial wherewithal and had the interest to reach out to people in need in Guyana was a major factor….” That was not the pivotal base on which Mohamed campaign rested.
When one speaks of Mohamed’s gains, they were not national but limited to a certain section of the Guyanese society. Hughes went on to say that the star boy ambience of Mohamed with his aura of designer stuff made young people attracted to him. Again, Hughes is wrong, and she is incompetent to give her take on the 2025 election without consulting the Statements of Poll (SOPs).

Nothing about Mohamed was national and the election results showed it. The PPP won by 3 more seats, more percentage points, and more votes than in 2020. Mohamed’s electoral acquisitions came through the switch over of PNC and AFC voters to WIN and not PPP voters.

The SOPs did reveal a tiny number of votes that went over to WIN from traditional PPP areas but tiny is the most appropriate word. Peter Ramsaroop, in an interview with me on Ignite Television, put it nicely when he used the word “scrapes” to describe the votes WIN got from the PPP.
So where was this national superhero appeal of Mohamed? The appeal was non-existent in PPP areas all over Guyana. Region Four is where Mohamed’s designer symbol should have been more effective, but the star-boy image did not dent the PPP in Region 4. In a break with over 65 years, the PPP beat the PNC in Region Four.
Had Cathy Hughes checked the SOPs, she would have seen WIN received votes from PNC constituencies all over Guyana. The SOPs showed that the Mulatto/Creole class did not vote for the AFC but for Forward Guyana of Amanza Walton-Desir. Hughes noted that Parliament was a traditional arena for intellectual and friendly exchanges but now is “a very violent, verbally abusive environment.”

Look who is talking? On April 28, after the Adrianna Younge autopsy report was made public, scrapeheads tried to burn down several parts of Guyana. The AFC held a press conference soon after in which Hughes  was present and her husband, Nigel, spoke. He appealed to Guyana to understand the world of the people referred to as scapeheads.” Nigel Hughes also echoed the sentiment of then Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton that the hundreds of scrapeheads that attempted to burn down parts of Guyana were agent provocateurs sent by the PPP although he didn’t name the PPP but everyone knew who he was referring to.

Cathy Hughes is either trying to deceive Guyanese or, at a deep psychological level, believes that what does not exist is real. In other words, she lives in her own reality. On September 1, sections of the electorate rejected both the PNC and the AFC because they felt that WIN was a better alternative to the PNC and the AFC.
Why they thought so?  Because the PNC and AFC used the occasion of the Adrianna Younge tragedy to put Mohamed on a pedestal. Mohamed used the pedestal to put a jumbie lash on the PNC and AFC. Growing up on D’Urban Street in South Georgetown, the street lingo was when you get a jumbie lash, you cannot survive. The PNC and AFC did not survive Mohamed’s jumbie lash.
In an election, there are several reasons why people vote. In Guyana, people rejected the AFC because of many persons in its leadership, like Cathy Hughes herself. Voters rejected Hughes in preference to Walton-Desir. They no doubt remembered the revelation of Trevor Williams, something for which I will never forget or forgive Ms. Hughes.

For five years Williams sat in the National Assembly next to Hughes. For ten years, Williams sat next to Hughes as members of the AFC’s executive committee and management committee. So, Williams thought Hughes was his comrade and asked Hughes (while he and Hughes were serving the APNU+AFC government) for the cell phone number of Minister Volda Lawrence. Minister Cathy Hughes told her AFC colleague, “I cannot give you a minister’s number.” Cathy Hughes does not belong in politics or in West Indian society.