Why APNU/AFC lost the 2020 elections (Part 1)

Dear Editor,
I wish to make it pellucid that a person who gives open advice must not be labelled as a source of bad news, but as a person providing sound guidance. Therefore, I am writing this missive, not as a political antagonist, but as an Ambassador for Peace.
As an Ambassador for Peace, peace is all that I am interested in, along with justice and fairness to all citizens. Whether they voted for a Government or not, these citizens must be protected and cared for.
Additionally, caring for those who did not support you is a hallmark of not only goodwill, but that of excellent governance.
You may note that I did not say ANPU+AFC in my caption; this was intentional. I think the PNC/APNU was extremely kind to the AFC to give them nine (9) seats. It is my view, and that of most ‘political pundits,’ that the AFC did not bring even a single seat to the PNC/APNU. And, as time progresses, they will go into disintegration, unless the PNC/APNU clings to them. In all honesty, the undersigned has little respect for the leadership of the AFC, except maybe for Cathy Hughes and Mr. Dominic Gaskin.
Allow me to express my opinions as to why I think the APNU/PNC lost the 2020 General Election. My thoughts are as follows:
1. You lost because you isolated yourselves from the masses. In my opinion, an impenetrable golden barrier separated the people from the leadership of the APNU/PNC.
2. You forgot that the people are the true bosses of the country, and that the people can bring down any Government they want; they can bring the Government out of power anytime they wish, and particularly at the end of their term.
3. The promises you made were left unfulfilled. As one who travelled the land, I heard the cries and lamentations of the people. Since taking the reins of power following the elections of 2015, instead of putting the people first, you boosted the salaries of ministers and Parliamentarians even as the economy broke. This was a bitter pill for the electorate. Something should have been done for the people first! And to add salt to the wounds of the citizens, the words of one of your officials which followed were harsh to the people’s ears: “We have no apologies to make.”
4. You failed to see the message of your supporters in the 2018 Local Government Elections, where you received a very sound thrashing from the electorate.
5. No housing schemes were established, although credit was used for the housing schemes of the former administration, and now the Government of Guyana. The few core homes were neither here nor there.
6. Rice, sugar, bauxite, gold and other significant foreign exchange-earners went under.
7. People were very bitter about the blatant effort by your coalition to cover the US$18 million ($18,000,000) signing bonus received from ExxonMobil. When your Government was forced to talk on the subject, it was as though the effort was to pull the wool over the eyes of the people. Never underestimate the intelligence of the man in the street.
8. You alienated friends and supporters by behaving as if they did not exist.
9. You had some boisterous party activists, one of them a minister, acting ridiculously and most vulgarly in the streets, counting of the votes, and many times thereafter. This led to disrepute and a severe decline in the PNC faction.
10. You denied appointments and recognitions to the positive and credible persons in society as if these instruments were the personal purview/property of the ‘Bigger Boys’ in your political domain.
11. You failed to win friends and influence people. I wrote openly in the media and made commentaries on TV programmes and social media about how important it is to master the technique of winning friends and influencing people. I wrote letters about this to senior Government officials, and recommended Dale Carnegie’s book of the same title, “How to win friends and influence people.” I have advised that the purpose must not only be to look out for whoever you consider your own, even though I, the undersigned, felt that you sometimes forgot your own.
You engaged in this Stalinist/Burnhamite technique of aggressively pulling the feathers off of a chicken, leaving it bloody and frail, cold and thirsty; but when you throw a few bits of crumbs at it, it will still follow you everywhere you go, because you keep throwing crumbs. Well, this time, this technique could not have succeeded. In my view, it was social media that disrupted your Stalinist strategy of power and dominance.
12. I believe that you, the PNC/APNU, isolated yourselves from your own supporters, and did not attract any of the supporters of the then Opposition, and now the Government. If you observe well, you would see that the new Government and its President, with his team, are travelling most generously to areas that are not normally their stronghold. This, dear APNU/AFC, is the mastery of the art of winning friends and influencing others.
13. The closure of the sugar estates was the most terrible decision, affecting tens of thousands of lives and the nation indirectly and directly. It affected the lives of at least ten thousand workers and their families. This was a huge mistake that the APNU+AFC have paid for dearly.

Sincerely,
Roshan Khan