Dear Editor,
There is a famous quote of Anglican Priest Frederick Lewis Donaldson and later immortalised by MK Gandhi which says that one of the “seven deadly social evils” is “politics without principle”. Gandhi had urged that these “deadly evils” must not be known merely through the intellect but “to know them through the heart so as to avoid them”. This great soul had experienced first-hand what “politics without principles” can do to a nation. We are now stepping back into that zone.
Moreover, we have heard it being repeated innumerable times that “politics is a dirty game” but not once probably have we reflected on the fact it is the dirty politicians who have created this ineradicable perception. In Guyana, many of us were weaned on the dirty politics which began with the advent of the PNC in 1957 and had since grown exponentially. The PNC wreaked havoc on the socio-economic fabric of this country since 1964 when it formed a coalition Government with the United Force.
It is instructive to note that the PNC has never won an election in this country on its own. The political situation became worse after the rigged elections in 1968 and continue to get increasingly worse subsequently after repeatedly rigged elections. No one can deny this fact. Fortunately, this came to an end in 1992 but has now resurfaced.
It seemed that in 2015 some people suffered acute amnesia that the PNC is alive and well, cunningly lurking under various baptismal names change. The Alliance for Change in its quest for power and money at all cost has now forgotten what it had claimed in its Action Plan in 2006 and 2011. Among other things, they had pledged never to coalesce with the PNC.
The AFC’s founding leaders in the Action Plan have spoken about being “weary and bruised” by both the PNC and PPP who have been taking Guyana in the “wrong directions”. However, these same leaders of the AFC shamelessly sold their lofty “founding principles” to the same PNC they had despised in order to live the ‘Cadillac lifestyle’. Soon after they had become just another head in the PNC hydra.
I saw this innate propensity of the AFC leaders to be corrupt and I spoke out against this since 2012 and even though I was unceremoniously expelled I continued my crusade against the deceit and corruption of the AFC. It became increasingly clear that power and money were paramount concerns of the AFC leaders.
Moreover, I was witnessing the continued gravitation of the AFC towards the PNC especially when they voted with the PNC in Parliament to stymie and kill socio-economic development such as the speciality hospital, the Amalia Hydro Project and even the Anti-Money Laundering Bill which caused Guyana to be blacklisted. In 2012 the budget was slashed by $21 billion by the APNU/AFC’s ‘coalition’ in Parliament in order to frustrate the PPP/C Government’s developmental plans.
That then became the norm until the prorogation of Parliament brought about by the No-Confidence Motion piloted by the then vociferous Moses Nagamootoo in August 2014. Then in 2015 the AFC came out in the open and signed the Cummingsburg Accord which saw an unholy alliance being birthed. It was the end of the AFC but the beginning of another PNC dictatorship and unprecedented high levels of corruption and cronyism. I had expected this since I know the PNC and the AFC is a dangerous cocktail.
The AFC leaders soon began an insane acceleration to get rich. The CJIA Expansion Project, the Demerara Harbour Bridge Feasibility Study, the giving away and gifting of the vast acreage of lands and contracts and above all, the mother of all corruption – the Exxon oil contract perpetrated by Trotman.
It was Trotman who had declared in the Action Plan of the AFC in 2011 that the AFC will not be “disappointing and betraying its citizens and allowing for an unfair distribution of the country’s wealth and the rich get richer while most Guyanese continue to remain poor”. Guyanese have now seen how they enriched themselves just after having given humongous salary increases. The AFC proved that they were dirtier politicians than the PNC.
Ramjattan had boasted in that same manifesto that Guyana needs “quality leadership, integrity and fearlessness” and the AFC can provide these. In addition, it must be recalled that after the signing of the Accord, this same man had said that if the APNU gets “out of hand”, the AFC will join with the PPP/C to throw them out with a No-Confidence Motion.
Unfortunately, when AFC’s parliamentarian Charrandas Persaud did exactly that, he was crucified by Ramjattan and others in the AFC. We have now seen that apart from the numerous acts of corruption and cronyism committed by the AFC, the leaders of the AFC have now embarked on a humiliating journey to destroy democracy in our country.
Since 2015 the AFC unabashedly supported all the illegal acts committed by Granger and GECOM, gradually eroding our democracy. Again, only one man displayed “quality leadership, integrity and fearlessness” not unlike Charrandas Persaud and that person is Dominic Gaskin. He openly spoke against the attempts to rig the elections by falsifying the Region Four votes. What has happened to Nagamootoo and Ramjattan, the “champions of democracy” when they were with the PPP? I could understand Trotman’s silence, he is always PNC.
History will be most unkind to these AFC leaders who have deceived the very people who supported and voted for them in the past. These people need to salvage whatever ‘integrity’ they have remaining and fearlessly confront the blatant attempts by the PNC to rig the 2020 elections and plummet this nation once again into the dark abyss of dictatorial rule. These dirty politicians should know that “non-co-operation with evil is a sacred duty” (MK Gandhi).
Yours sincerely,
Haseef Yusuf
