“HEAVEN hath no rage like love to hatred turned.  Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned” – excerpt from the play The Mourning Bride by William Congreve. That line was written and often repeated long before the chairman of the AFC came along.  But today, if one were looking for unbridled rage with no regard to consequence, the nod would surely go to Ramjattan.
With so many more constructive things to focus on, it is somewhat distressing to have them crowded out by the results of the personal agenda of havoc of a public figure.
It would be stroking Ramjattan’s ego to say that he is solely responsible for events that have transpired.  There are other players that would be glad to claim their share of credit, even as events overtake individual actors. However, on the nationally elected level, he has been the most consistently poisonous with a venom that betrays the lack of any greater good intention lurking beneath. And which reveals instead a Kamikaze mental attitude that would annihilate all in the process of making a point.
One wonders what Sheila Holder would have said had she been alive today.  But it seems that events have conspired to give the unlikely Mr. Ramjattan free reign to co-opt a party whose very structure was supposed to curb the excesses of any single run amok individual.
Raphael Trotman, the other co-founder of the AFC, whether fortuitously or by design, seems to have taken the opportunity afforded by his appointment as Speaker to garner some distance from the unfortunate actions carried out in the name of the party in recent months.
This is a party that campaigned on moderation, reaching out to all Guyanese of good will, harmony, cooperation, economic prosperity, democracy, fresh thinking and building trust.  A number of well-intentioned, bright, young, progressive Guyanese looking past the shackles of an era before their time were hopeful. Others heard the campaign promises and thought: what harm could there be in taking a chance on them?
Many are now dumfounded. What could have gone so horribly wrong? The AFC actions of today bear scant resemblance to the campaign before the elections.
What happened to the voice that was supposed to be a champion of moderation and harmony?  What happened to the voice that was supposed to put racial harmony, building confidence and building trust above party politics and narrow dogma?
It is no more.
Mind you, in the months leading up to the Linden disturbance the voice was loud with self-fulfilling prophecies of unrest. But now there is a chance to deploy the purportedly core strengths and vision the party touted before the election, it has instead gone to ground. No appeal for calm. No unambiguous call for restraint. Mr. Ramjattan, now the sole voice of the AFC is missing in action when it comes to those matters, as it becomes increasingly clear that segments of the population have and are been played for his very personal political ends.
When he did take the podium during the AFC conference at which Raphael Trotman announced he was stepping down as party leader, instead of taking the opportunity of showing character and placing country before self, Mr. Ramjattan chose to press forward with more inflammatory rhetoric about making an example on the streets.
This utter lack of statesmanship or even simple regard for the welfare of the populace juxtaposes against Robert Corbin, for example, whose situation is more complex but yet  called for restraint with his “wild men in your midst” statement. And the PNCR, even if belatedly, later released a statement that “condemns all acts of violence and call on all parties to be restrained in their actions.”
These actions, and maybe even more tellingly the lack of action by the AFC in select instances, mark an incomprehensible destructive agenda that ranges from opposing LCDS payments to Guyana by Norway, voting to defund the Ethnic relations Commission (ERC), opposing the Amaila Falls hydro project, casually dismissing hardship they caused as “collateral damage”, etc.
The Mourning Bride moniker is an attempt to understand Ramjattan’s efforts to disrupt and sabotage Guyana, and in many ways it is too charitable. One would hope that the party can pull out of his Kamikaze mission he has it vectored on.