Dear Editor,
The Alliance for Change will never change and its current course of action to boycott the March 13th Local Government Elections has confirmed its ‘dead meat ‘status. The party is deathly afraid of what the LGE results will reveal since it will be unable to hide behind the APNU.
In the 2018 LGE, the AFC was greatly embarrassed when they could have only mustered 4 per cent or 8719 of the votes whilst its estranged partner collected 34 per cent. The PPP/C won by a landslide with 61 per cent of the votes. What number of votes would the AFC expect in 2023 is anyone’s guess since they continued to tarnish their already bad reputation when they supported the PNC attempts to rig the March 2020 General Elections. The Guyanese people have seen enough to understand that the AFC was never about Guyana and they had been totally consumed by the PNC – completely subservient. Now that they have been thrown in the deep to fend for themselves, the final extermination is at hand.
On November 13th, 2022, the AFC conformed that it will boycott the 2023 LGE because the list is ‘bloated’ (a term which is gaining popularity by the Opposition), ‘illegitimate’ and ‘a source of electoral fraud’ (the many attempts to rig the 2020 elections was not ‘illegitimate’ and the ‘source of the fraud’ is now coming to light and rehearsed again with the current CoI). Why is the deafening silence of the AFC on the 2020 rigging attempts? First and foremost, the AFC needs to denounce the 2020 rigging attempt. These statements by the AFC will never gain traction, they need to come clean.
The AFC did not get 4 per cent votes in the 2018 LGE because of a ‘bloated list’, ‘voters’ impersonation’, ‘duplication’ and the dead voting for the PPP/C. They got severe licks because of what they had promised in 2015 and what they had delivered from then to 2020. Many who voted for the AFC in 2015 went back home. The same is true for the APNU. They received 34 per cent of the votes because that was what their die-hard supporters could deliver and those disgruntled remained home. Furthermore, the 2018 LGE was the harbinger of the decimation of the coalition and was the catalyst for the No-Confidence Motion in December the same year. The prognosis is that this upcoming 2023 LGE will be worse for both the AFC and the APNU.
The year-end ‘break up’ is quite expected. The AFC has nothing to offer the coalition. The AFC will attempt damage control. But this salvaging strategy will not work. The AFC is ‘dead meat’ and its fall echoed tremendously in every nook and cranny and ‘all the king’s horses and all the king’s men’ cannot put it together again.
The people will always remember that every unconstitutional act, every socio-economic destabilisation strategy, every act to erode the standard of living of the people, every corrupt practice and every attempt to rig the 2020 General Elections were all fully supported by the Alliance for Change. Will the AFC admit that it has failed the people? Will it put itself at the mercy of Guyanese and beg forgiveness? This would be the defining moment which Guyanese will be waiting for. But alas! It will never come!
The AFC would be wise to heed the advice of the great Martin Luther King, who once said that “Forgiveness does not mean ignoring what has been done or putting a false label on an evil act.”
Yours sincerely,
Haseef Yusuf
