Dear Editor,
Earlier this year, I recognised a deliberate attempt to misinform the public by the then still fairly ‘new’ leader of the Alliance For Change, specifically with relation to his narrative on the spate of violence that shook this society two decades ago.
In light of this, I underscored what I perceived to be the particularly evasive brand of political engagement as practised by the AFC leader, wherein he would put forward questionable information as fact and then retreat, dodge, evade and dissemble when challenged. The majority of the backlash I received in challenging Hughes focused not on the substance of my argument but on my age and current professional status. The main argument was that, whatever fact I was pointing out, as a young medical student, I had no right to question the great, experienced lawyer’s political leadership and integrity. Much of that criticism, and it was often as scathing as it gets, came from young AFC members who came to the rabid defence of Hughes.
A mere six months later, and two months before an election, last weekend saw the resignation of key members of the youngest tier of AFC leadership: Onix Duncan and Dillon Mohamed. Not too far from myself in age or professional achievement, Onix and Dillon, the two most prominent youth faces from AFC, both cited Hughes’ failed captaincy of Guyana’s political Titanic in their resignation letters.
Dillon decried the AFC “leadership” as having “once again demonstrated scant regard for its youth, expecting the youth to be in full support of leaders who are demonstrating that they are likely to repeat their disregard for the youth as in 2016.” Onix asserted that the AFC’s “leadership” had “failed to create a space of genuine inclusion and internal engagement, particularly following the creation of a faction/group called the ‘Better Must Come’”. “Better Must Come” is a slogan coined by and long associated with Hughes, even before he openly returned to politics.
Of course, these resignations do not come in isolation. They follow the departure of the first tier of young AFC leadership – Sherod Duncan, Juretha Fernandes, and Rickey Ramsaroop – to the Norton camp in the middle of AFC and APNU negotiating on a coalition arrangement. Dillon has also since joined them.
Added to that indictment of Hughes’ leadership was, while not a defection, a still significant rejection, with one of Hughes’ most ardent defenders, co-counsel with him on the election fraud cases, a former employee and prominent protégé, Ronald J. Daniels, choosing to make his long-anticipated entry into the political arena not under Nigel Hughes but Aubrey Norton.
Finally, and I believe that this is a further testament to the character and modus operandi of Hughes, there is one incident that has gone relatively unnoticed in the press. Last week, on his Facebook page, Hughes put out what he clearly believed to be a ground-breaking legislative solution:
“On the issue of the confirmation of the Chancellor and the Chief Justice, the AFC will introduce legislation which provides that in the event of the absence of an agreement between the President and the Leader of the Opposition on the appointment of a substantive Chancellor and Chief Justice, the nominees of both the President and the Leader of the Opposition be referred to the Regional Judicial and Legal Services Commission of the CCJ for their determination.”
Instead of applause, he was met with puzzled pushback, including from former Finance Minister Winston Jordan, who pointed out that such legislation would be “ultra vires the constitution”, to which Hughes tersely replied, “It will be a constitutional amendment.”
More authoritatively, the Attorney General, the Honourable Anil Nandlall, SC, hours after the post was made, used his page to rip apart Hughes’ proposal in his own inimitable fashion:
“Perhaps with all the political beatings, learnt counsel may be overwhelmed, for I cannot imagine that he would commit such an elementary error. The legislation which the AFC plans to introduce will clearly be in tension with and in contravention of the clear language of Article 127 of the Constitution and shall, accordingly, be unconstitutional, null, void and of no effect.”
There has been no direct rebuttal of the AG coming from Hughes. Instead, days later, on July 1, a response was posted on AFC party pages arguing that what was meant by legislation also included constitutional amendment.
The letter was not from Hughes, not from any of the two other attorneys in the executive, Khemraj Ramjattan or Raphael Trotman. It did not even come from someone in the senior executive. That response also notably did not even refer once to the name “Nigel Hughes”, the party leader and the man who proposed the ‘solution’.
That letter was instead signed by Le Shante Marks, President of Youth for Change. For me this is reminiscent of the 34/65 No Confidence Vote argument that Hughes put forward on social media but completely ran away from when it came to representing that argument in court.
It should also be noted that even as there was a response to the AG’s criticism of Hughes’ ill-conceived legislation, neither Marks, to whom the resignation letters by Onix and Duncan were sent, nor Hughes, whom the letters described as failed leadership, have addressed or even acknowledged the resignation of the two young men.
At this point in time, the handful of members that remain in the AFC (I don’t see them finding enough candidates come Nomination Day) must be looking directly at Hughes and muttering under their breath, “Better Must Come”.
Yours sincerely,
Nikhil Sankar
