I RECENTLY interviewed for the Freddie Kissoon Show a former AFC youth leader, Colin Haynes, who later became CEO for the Diamond Hospital under the APNU+AFC government. A brief but absorbing digression: Colin Haynes has the distinction of having the shortest term of being a CEO in the public sector. His tenure lasted one month, second only to Dr Mark Kirton who was Vice-Chancellor of the University for three days. Both men had their statuses terminated.
Colin Haynes repeated the mantra that can be found in all, without exception, anti-government persons that the opposition would have done better and might even have created a minority government for the PPP if there was a coalition between the PNC and AFC. I have heard that said by Aubrey Norton himself in a podcast with Svetlana Marshall.
My point is that once there was an electoral contestant named APNU+AFC in the 2025 elections, that entity would have been routed. The APNU and AFC participated separately and lost 19 seats in the 2025 elections from what they both had in the 2020 elections, with APNU reduced to 12 and AFC none.
No matter how the cards were shuffled and new faces of the brightest Guyanese came onto an APNU+AFC ticket, that entity would have been demolished in 2025. It is debatable if the PNC and AFC separately realised that the rigging of the 2020 elections was their Kool-Aid. In the 2025 elections, a majority of the electorate did not want to see and hear a political party named the APNU+AFC. The reason was that the name was synonymous with election rigging.
I believe that if the APNU+AFC had allowed for the no-confidence vote to become operational, it would not have won the 2020 elections or even become a minority government, but it would have had about seats between 28 to 32. It would not have won even a minority government because the sugar workers cruelty had become the death blow for the APNU-AFC, but its seat collection would have been substantial.
It was a horror show of five months from March to July in 2020 that destroyed the morality and physiology of both the PNC and the AFC. The pappyshow from June to August in 2025 about the resurrection of an APNU+AFC coalition was the working out of a ghoulish imagination by the leaders of the PNC and the AFC.
I am inclined to accept that if there was a brand new coalition with a different name in 2025 with about five different parties and some leaders of the PNC and AFC were in but with backseat status, that coalition may have pulled in far more seats than what the PNC got in September last, but not the coalition with the name APNU+AFC
The psychologically arid people in the PNC and AFC that were seeking an APNU+AFC rebirth for the 2025 elections had no clue about how the electorate felt about them. Three things doomed the biology of both parties from 2020. One is that given the history of election rigging, Guyanese saw a return to that debauchery as morally sickening.
Secondly, Guyana was accustomed to free and fair elections with alternative governments coming into being. The PPP lost its majority in 2011 and lost power in 2015. Guyanese welcomed a new political horizon where governments come and go. When the PNC and AFC started to rig the elections on Tuesday, March 3, it sent shock waves through the nation. The nightmare and era of rigged elections had returned to Guyana.
Thirdly, people rejected the attempts at manipulating the Mach 2020 elections because Guyana would no longer have alternative government. Guyana would have one government only for the foreseeable future. This last factor has been the decisive determinant for me in condemning people like Rupert Roopnaraine, Clive Thomas, Eusi Kwayana, Moses Bhagwan, Nigel Westmaas, the Guyana Human Rights Association, among others.
They knew that rigged elections were synonymous with permanent power. All the names cited above had fought for free and fair elections since 1968 and I was with them and I knew them up close and personal. What could have happened to their souls to want to support tampering with the right of Guyanese to vote for a government of their choice?
The story of March 2020 in Guyana was the crucial factor in how people voted in September 2025. The electorate asked itself, should we vote for the PNC and if they win, will we have free elections ever again? The electorate asked itself should we vote for Nigel Hughes who had shouted from the rooftop that 34 is the majority of 65. Only a sad, empty mind believed a coalition of PNC and AFC could have won in 2025. They both may die before elections in 2030.
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.