Battle in the AFC between the ‘anointed’ and his ‘anointer’

Dear Editor,
It is now a battle in the Alliance For Change (AFC) by the ‘anointed’ and his ‘anointer’ for the prime ministerial candidacy! Both of these men were from the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) and left that party to fulfil their quest for power and material gain.
Moses V Nagamootoo joined the PPP in 1964 and since the inception, his main goal was to fulfil his personal ambitions with no regard to bring good to the people of Guyana. This was recognised at an early stage by both the Jagan’s leadership of the PPP. This became openly manifested when the late Janet Jagan opted for Bharrat Jagdeo as her replacement and not Nagamootoo. She knew that in Nagamootoo’s agenda, only Nagamootoo came first!
When he resigned from the PPP on October 24, 2011, and joined the AFC, it was a continuation of his quest to become the President of Guyana. He wasted no time and in 2014 he was among the presidential nominees but in 2015 after his ‘President or nothing’ grandstanding with the A Partnership for National Unity, he had to settle for the prime ministerial candidacy. However, after the results of the May 2015 General Elections, he was catapulted closer to realising his presidential dreams – he became the Prime Minister and the First Vice President with opportunity to fleetingly hold the presidential office when President Granger is briefly out of the country. Talk about self-centred tenacity and guile! Just imagine a man who doggedly fought the People’s National Congress (PNC) since 1964 was willing to sacrifice his proclaimed ideals in order to pursue his personal ambitions. When he had ‘leadership issues’ with the PPP in 2005 he was quoted as saying that, “I intend to walk down and go to where I have come, which is the grassroots, which is among the masses, which is among the supporters of the party, which is my people…” but when he became the Prime Minister, he suffered amnesia. The grassroots no longer appealed to him and he began to endorse every act of corruption and mismanagement perpetrated by the PNC, especially the closing of the sugar estates and the discarding of 7000 workers resulting in untold sufferings among the ‘grassroots’ which was his ‘people’! He is now living the “Cadillac’ lifestyle which he had once spurned. He engineered, endorsed and carried out a ‘bloodless assassination’ of the poor sugar workers.
Today, he is once again fighting the leadership of his party, the AFC, to be given another chance to remain as the prime ministerial candidate. In 2011, when he defected to the AFC, that party was already a few weeks away from November 28 General Elections. He joined a party that gained seven seats at that election and he piggybacked on the contributions made by Dr Veerasammy Ramayya and others. This can be seen at the 2015 Elections when the support of the AFC in Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne) actually fell drastically, and the AFC actually rode on the success of the APNU. The LGE in November last year confirmed the dismal failure of the AFC, not only in Region Six but across the country! He failed to deliver and it is now clear that Nagamootoo’s future as a politician is ‘dead meat’!
His deceitful ploy in the State media that the ‘AFC backs Granger-Nagamootoo ticket’ just accentuates the cunning nature of this self-centred hypocrite. That never happened and the prime ministerial candidacy is still to be decided on. He is now willing to fight his mentee for power. It must be recalled that Ramjattan in September 2014 had declared that the ‘rotational’ principle to choose the top elections candidates was abandoned and will be based on ‘meritocracy’. He said ‘the popular democratic vote’ at the AFC’s conference will decide on the candidate. However , he had admitted then that he endorsed Nagamootoo because of a combination of factors such as what ‘is best for the country, ability to attract campaign financing, hardworking, intellectuals, knowledge of running a government’. It is now clear that Ramjattan no longer believes that this holds true at this time! Moreover, apart from the power struggle, it is puzzling that even though the election of the prime ministerial candidate was supposed to be at the AFC’s conference as agreed in 2014, there was an attempt to do so at a statutory meeting of 108 members many of which are not NEC members. It would seem that a rigging process was planned to take place but was aborted after much wrangling. It was then decided that the procedure will now be carried out in March at the rescheduled biennial conference. We can expect a ‘dogfight’ between Nagamootoo who had promised that 2015 elections will be his swan song and Ramjattan the man who was deceived not by a ‘swan’ but something exceedingly slithery!
But I have a strong feeling neither of the two will ever be the next Prime Minister!

Yours sincerely,
Haseef Yusuf