Dear Editor,
As a child I was extremely fond of reading fairy tales, especially those by Hans Christian Anderson and Grimm, but I learnt a lot from the theme of such stories. One such story is the ‘Fisherman and His Wife’. The theme of “The Fisherman and his wife”, is to not be greedy and be happy if you get rewarded in any way for a good deed. The ‘fisher man and his wife’ tells us about when the fisher man went out to catch some fish but caught a prince fish. He was granted some wishes which made him extremely wealthy, but his wife was not satisfied and wanted Divine qualities. This made the fish angry and they were once again cast into their poverty-stricken days. The tale of the Alliance for Change makes me vividly recall this story!
The Cummingsburg Accord signed on Lover’s Day 2015, gave the Alliance for Change 40 per cent of the number of seats in Parliament and ministries in government. It was seen that just one month after assuming office in 2015 the AFC wanted to re-examine the Accord and as Moses Nagamootoo had suggested, ‘the accord itself is not something that is cast in stone. Things are going to be dynamic as we go along, and we will have to look at the dynamics of the situation’. However, the Accord was indeed ‘cast in stone’ since from that date until now it has remained inviolable even though Moses never chaired Cabinet. It was also seen that despite the fact that the AFC received the 40 per cent share, it was devoid of any real power since their ministers became mere figureheads or constitutional ‘nobodies’! They only agree or disagree as the situation demands. This may have been the primary reason why the AFC feels that they should be getting more than 40 per cent of the spoils and wanted badly to review the Cummingsburg Accord. They wanted real power!
Therefore, the AFC ceaselessly clamored for a review. In November 2017, they demanded a review by February 14th, 2018, and Granger had agreed to that review. However, in 2018, the AFC missed its own deadline for the review, and Granger dropped the bombshell on February 15th 2018 that he saw no need to review the Accord. But Granger went further and challenged the AFC to prove their intrinsic value to the Coalition. They were asked to contest the Local Government Elections solo!
The ‘fisherman’s wife’ wanted control. However, this insane obstinacy and greed for absolute power led to the AFC’s downfall, and exposed the fact that they are now ‘dead meat’ and of nominal value to the APNU. The ‘fit and proppa’ hype, the hallucinated and delusional boast, the extravagant waste of State resources, the lies, the deceits and the frauds serve only to expose and confirm the corrupt nature of the Alliance for Change! The voters had the final say on November 12th 2018, and the curse of the ‘fish prince’ was completed.
However, the AFC predicament has now become worse than that of the ‘fisher man’s wife’. They could only eke two seats in the entire Region 6 and one APNU dominated area-New Amsterdam. Nagamootoo, the man who made four ‘sirened State’ visits to Whim, utilized the Government’s resources for AFC’s campaigning purposes; temporarily transferred his Office at Port Mourant to Whim for two months to whip up support; misled and misused students of Auchlyne Primary School and their parents for electioneering purposes; gave his blessings to the fraud, trickery and deceit unleashed on his ‘own people’ at Whim and the personal attack and framing of a PPP candidate for alleged arson followed by his ‘terrorists’ attacked on the PPP, miserably failed in his bid to have some semblance of relevance in the place where he claimed his ‘navel string juk’. He could only muster one PR seat from the ‘left over’ votes. The man who loves to compare himself with the Biblical Moses was totally rejected by the people of Whim/Bloomfield! He was soundly kicked out of the ‘promised land’!
The same fate was met by his counterpart Khemraj Ramjattan, who made weekly ‘sirened’ trips to his place of birth, bought drinks for his cronies, doled out State resources, made threats of ‘fixing’ PPP supporters and also gave his blessing to the devious and illegal tactics used by the AFC to get backers and to sideline even their own member, resulted in complete rejection by the people. In his now famous parlance, he was told in no uncertain terms to ‘haul his ass’! The entire AFC could only get 944 votes in the whole of Region 6!
I have written extensively on the corruption and cronyism in the AFC since 2011, and I have been ridiculed and was branded a liar and a ‘rogue’ councilor by the AFC. This was followed by an unceremonious expulsion, but I persevered and knew that one day the truth would come to light, and it has. Mahatma Gandhi once said that, ‘First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win’.
The curse of the ‘fisherman’s wife’ is now complete!
Yours sincerely,
Haseef Yusuf
