Dear Editor,
The launching of the Alliance For Change (AFC) as a genuine third force in 2005 was, in the politics of Guyana, welcomed to serve as a balance against one party. The party’s rise and initial success defied the established language of political appeal based on ethnicity. The AFC offered a vision of pro-people policies to reduce costs of governance.
So much hope had been rested on the AFC. The party was comprised of people almost all of whom now seem compromised and not different from their predecessors. The party has given up its third-force responsibility, which had given balance to the country’s politics, and instead has seemingly morphed into the PNC (APNU).
Almost every political analyst who has studied Guyana concurs that the AFC’s involvement in coalition governance has been a fiasco. And unless its leadership and/or its concerned membership urgently decides to take an objective assessment of the ground realty and act immediately, the party’s future is bleak and unrecoverable.
Most of its support has vanished because of its inability or unwillingness to rein in the dominant PNC in the ruling coalition in decision-making and policies.
The AFC mounted a serious challenge to the two dominant ethnic-based parties. It did extremely well in 2006 for a newcomer, although it did not garner much support in Indian communities, giving it the appearance of another ethnic party. In 2011, Indians flocked to the party (attracted to Moses Nagamootoo, who had defected from the PPP), but simultaneously Africans returned to its natural based PNC, leaving AFC as still an ethnic party.
It was not until 2015, through the coalition formation, that the AFC was able to attract genuine multi-ethnic support. But in less than two years, most of the party’s supporters have withdrawn, disappointed at what they perceive to be the opportunistic, self-serving behaviour of the top echelons of that party.
There is a virtual collapse of support for the AFC. And if the leadership does not pay attention to this reality, it is only fooling itself that it is popular with voters, in much the same way that the leadership of the PPP fooled itself into believing it would never lose an election in 2011; even feeling so confident of Indian support that it put up a dour candidate as its presidential nominee. In its seemingly uncertain future as a party, the AFC as a political experiment needs to be studied and lessons taken: why people were drawn towards it, and why they are abandoning it in droves.
The AFC was formed in the context of an anti-corruption movement, as well as to combat depraved arrogance and to lead a move away from ethnic politics (although in 2011 the party campaigned on ethnicity and won over large swaths of the Indian votes). AFC held many promises of a new politics unimagined (although the voters have gone back to their ethnic base because of the behaviour of the AFC over the last two years). Unlike the other parties, the AFC leadership was very approachable (although the leadership, apart from Nagamootoo, is no longer accessible) – the poor working class and farmers could engage them. The AFC promised that democracy would mean citizen engagement in decision-making. This idea of citizen-dominated politics had the potential of forever changing the nature of leadership-dominated politics in Guyana, in which the professional politicians alone would call the shots. But the AFC has failed to live up to expectations in implementing this promised new politics of decision making from the bottom. The working class has been shunted aside.
Everywhere, people complain that virtually none of the party’s promises was delivered in two years of coalition governance. The AFC, they complain, has become another run-of-the-mill party. And worse, AFC supporters, they say, have been abused and neglected by the very ones who had condemned the PPP and PNC for neglecting their base and for being arrogant. The AFC leadership is behaving no differently from what obtains with the other parties.The AFC started out well as a new party, but it has become intoxicated with the old wine of the old political culture. Nothing has really changed in its role in government (corruption is rampant; waste is almost everywhere, people participation in decision making is out the window, etc). Members complain that, since coming into Government, the AFC has not had much interaction with them. The leadership has neither channelled members’ energies systematically for the benefit of the nation or for the members, nor has it come up with any new model citizen participation whereby people can continue engagement in party work or participate in government decision-making. And, most notably, its acerbic attacks on bad governance and corruption have become mute once in Government. The party’s future is at stake. It needs to take stock and address the situation urgently if it wants to remain relevant in the politics of Guyana, or if it wants to avoid being a paper party, a shell, like the WPA.
Yours faithfully,
Vishnu Bisram
