AFC in no position to renegotiate ‘Accord’ with Granger’s PNC

…history will remember AFC as the destructors that let sugar fail – Ramsaroop

The imminent death and fading away of the Alliance For Change (AFC) from the landscape of Guyanese politics has come at a price – a price the sugar workers who voted for the likes of Khemraj Ramjattan and Moses Nagamootoo have been made to pay.
As such, the current economic quagmire in which Guyana finds itself can be laid in great part at the feet of the AFC, a party whose “marriage of convenience” with the People’s National Congress (PNC) three years ago was formalised in the now

infamous Valentine’s Day Accord inked at the Georgetown Club.
This was the position of Economic Advisor to the Opposition, Peter Ramsaroop in an interview with Guyana Times this past week as he reflected on the AFC and what he termed “a marriage of convenience”, which he said would quickly come to an end.
“It was as if the sugar workers were sacrificed on the altar of the PNC-led [A Partnership For National Unity] APNU, since it was the AFC that secured the votes for the coalition in the May 2015 Elections.”
The Economic Advisor was adamant that the fate of the sugar industry has to be seen in the context of the promises the AFC Leaders made to the workers in the sugar belt – “promises they were expected to hold the PNC to keep”.
According to Ramsaroop, the AFC Leaders having been seduced with the promise of power were willing to “sell the sugar workers’ votes to David Granger and the PNC knowing fully well that party was not supported by or supported in the sugar belt”.
Ramsaroop in his analysis said that the end result is that the Granger Government now has control – with the help of the sugar workers’ votes handed to it by the AFC – and has instead gone about shutting down the industry, already laying off thousands of workers.
He reminded that worst yet the workers in some cases were only paid a portion off their severance packages.
Reflecting on the pact between the AFC and the PNC-led APNU coalition, Ramsaroop said the AFC’s Leaders were all out with a single motive in mind – getting power for themselves.
According to Ramsaroop, now that the AFC top tier have been positioned in cushy jobs they are all too willing not to rock the boat with the David Granger Administration.
This, he said, is evident in the party’s private, since made public, internal consternations over the appointment of a geriatric chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission, but it was powerless to influence the likes of the ‘de facto President’ and the President by not making   more  of that  questionable decision.
According to Ramsaroop, at the time the AFC signed “its marriage certificate with the PNC” in the Cummingsburg Accord, there was an agreement to share various government positions.
“What the AFC was promised on paper sounded at the time as though they could be able to hold Granger and his boys to account, but having been appointed to senior positions with fat salaries and  accompanying perks, the Ramjattans, Nagamootoos, Trotmans and Pattersons  discarded any thought of accountability  throwing the principle  completely out of the window.”
Inked on Valentine’s Day in 2015 ahead of the regional and general elections, the Cummingsburg Accord promised the AFC the prime ministerial position that boasted a range of new powers and control.
Alas, according to Ramsaroop, “no sooner than the ink had dried on the Cummingsburg Accord that Nagamootoo, a supposed lawyer, was told that none of what he was promised was catered for under the Constitution.”
He told this publication, “I do not want to speak ill about a man who is currently not in the best of health, but his absence from Government will not be detrimental since he only cuts ribbons at openings.”
Ramsaroop used as an example of the PNC’s disregard for the AFC the fact that the President did not see it fit to select a member of the AFC faction of the coalition to act as Prime Minister while Nagamootoo was unwell and unable to perform his functions.
“Sadly, this is the reality with which the AFC  it has found itself in and this 2018 is its last year of existence as any kind of a political force in Guyana,” Ramsaroop stated.
He qualified his position by pointing that the upcoming Local Government Elections, elections that the AFC said it would go alone since the popular view was that it has begun to lose its identity.
He concluded by saying that with the AFC most likely to be decimated at the polls, President Granger would then have no use for the party, since it would have lost the important sugar vote that had given it power in 2015.
According to Ramsaroop, “voters will also not be kind to the AFC come the next general election as   the party once thought to be a viable third force would have been remembered   by the sugar workers that they were cast aside by political opportunists who not only destroyed their lives, but also the economic base of the country for their own personal gain.”
There was a grandiose promise at the end of December on the part of the AFC and its leadership to renegotiate the Cummingsburg Accord to ensure that Granger not only delivered on what was promised in the first place but also expanded its power.
Ramsaroop posited: “The AFC is dreaming if it thinks that the people of Guyana ever really believed that it was in any position to renegotiate with Granger….This week we celebrated Valentine’s Day, promoting love, but there appeared to be none for AFC as there was no renewed Accord.”