MY wife and I went to Wakenaam last Friday for her cousin’s funeral. On our way back to Region 4, we got stuck for an hour at the western entrance of the Demerara Harbour Bridge (the bridge is a destructive intrusion into one’s psychological serenity). On our way back, I put into the car stereo my wife’s favourite female singer in the English language – Karen Carpenter.
As we waited with expanding agony to cross the bridge, “This Masquerade” was playing. It is one of the most beautiful love songs ever written and sung, and will remain like that forever. It is one of my wife’s favourite songs of all time. When you are waiting on the bridge, you get so resigned to your fate that the conversation in the car ceases, and everyone inside the car has periodic moments of silence.
Something struck me as This Masquerade was playing. It was uncanny, weird, surreal and unbelievable. I know the lyrics of the song by heart. But I pressed the rewind button to listen to it again. Please read the lyrics or listen to the lyrics coming from one of the most inviting voices in English pop music, and tell me if any song in any language is more relevant in understanding the “bust-up” between the PNC and AFC in the run-up to the 2025 election.
I implore readers to read the lyrics at the end of the column and tell me if I am not a thousand per cent right. The back and forth in the negotiation between the PNC and AFC was identical to a masquerade. In the end, the masquerade imploded into electoral tragedy.
I always felt that Irfaan Ali was unbeatable in 2025 because his personality and transformative style had too compelling an influence on the electorate to make him lose. What I felt also was that a PNC and AFC Alliance would have done better if the two were together rather than alone, because Norton was unelectable and Hughes could not make it on his own.
Vice President Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, put it correctly. He said some people didn’t want to vote for the PPP, but they didn’t want to vote for the PNC either so they gave their ballots to WIN. Even a cursory examination of the Statements of Poll (SOPs) showed the PPP support held steady and increased, while the PNC’s votes had a gargantuan reduction, and the AFC was wiped out. Those SOPs showed that WIN took the PNC’s ballots, and voters rejected the AFC.
If you had the following formula, the coalition would not have won the election but would have substantially reduced the Xs that WIN got. Here is that formula. A presidential candidate not from the AFC to placate Norton, and a presidential candidate not from the PNC, to make the AFC comfortable and a women PM candidate from the PNC.
Forget about Azruddin Mohamed. Once you had that APNU+AFC covenant with small parties of people like Simona Broomes and Dorwin Bess, then that arrangement would have dented Mohamed. With that coalition, Mohamed could not and would not have picked up 16 seats.
PNC supporters and AFC admirers thought that the masquerade of three months between the PNC and AFC was just a pantomime that they found unpalatable, so they stayed home and voted for WIN out of emotional rage. I believe their thoughts went like this – “these are experienced, mature politicians who tell us to vote out the PPP, but look at how they behave; they aren’t better than the PPP, they are obsessed with power.”
This was the crucial moment when the masquerade turned into tragedy. And Aubrey Norton is to be blamed, not the AFC people. Norton was simply unelectable, but his congenital ego got in the way. WIN is a passing phase, but the selection of the 12 PNC parliamentarians is another masquerade that will turn into another tragedy. Please read the lyrics below.
This masquerade by the Carpenters
Are we really happy with this lonely game we play?
Looking for the right words to say
Searching but not finding understanding anyway
We’re lost in this masquerade

Both afraid to say we’re just too far away
From being close together from the start
We tried to talk it over but the words got in the way
We’re lost inside this lonely game we play

Thoughts of leaving disappear each time I see your eyes
And no matter how hard I try
To understand the reason why we carry on this way
We’re lost in this masquerade

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.