IN my last column I ended by giving the AFC credit for softening the binary hardline that had characterised electoral support prior to 2006. We have a generation of voters who have displayed migratory traits in sufficient quantities that can tilt election results in favourable directions, either for the incumbent or the opposition.
This glaring characteristic in our voting demographic was missed bigly by the PNC. At the 2025 General and Regional Elections, the principals of APNU seemed to believe that the voting patterns were fixed and predictable and that any migration from the two larger parties will stay within the swing margin of one to two seats. This is the main reason why they treated Azruddin Mohamed with kids’ gloves. They saw him as an attractive East Indian prospect, who would steal one or two seats of the PPP’s traditional Indian support base and force a minority government.
They reasoned that even if they lost a seat or two to Mohamed, it would not hurt their overall pursuit. The PNC’s self-defeatist posture, which was transmitted to its support base, was that it could never win an election on its own. David Hinds for example, rambled that APNU does not need to directly pursue “cross-over voters,” and this type of voter is possible only through a coalition. Of course, the PNC learnt a bitter lesson.
On the other hand, the PPP placed serious political value on the existence of migratory instincts scattered across the country. In this regard, the PPP organised its political strategy around two main trajectories: 1. prevent access via its messaging (and formidable disincentives that limited actual physical access) to its constituencies by key opposition figures and 2. Tailor its messaging to appeal to traditional PNC voters in specific and intense ways it had not done at any time in its history.
These strategies paid off handsomely for the PPP. It was able to protect its base from infiltration by Mohamed, while gaining meaningful votes from traditional PNC constituencies.
Because of the aforementioned softening of the voting hardline due to the performance of the AFC in 2006 and 2011, contributed to making the coalition victory possible in 2015.
APNU+AFC could not win the 2015 elections without meaningful East Indian support. Of course, the presence of the AFC is not the only reason for enlarging the pool of migratory voters in both the strongholds of the PPP and PNC, but it is a significant explanatory factor.
The AFC was keenly aware of its strengths and the credits that were due to it. This awareness was on full display when it negotiated the original Cummingsburg Accord. The AFC had a bold and audacious confidence in their approach to those negotiations, AFC may have, at times, overwhelmed APNU.
The moment the elections were won, I kid you not, I repeat for emphasis, the very moment the elections were won, a new AFC was born. Well, that’s a misstatement. It may be more appropriate to say there was an unmasking of the middle-class ethos of the AFC. The dominant expectation and discussions in the press, on social media and in some of the political nooks was, how will the AFC act as a balancing or tempering influence on the PNC? The central leadership of the AFC demonstrated no real interest in this aspect of the relationship with APNU. The AFC faction in cabinet had no use for that sort of politics. In fact, at an AFC press conference early in the life of the coalition government, the media asked what strategies the party is pursuing to operate a temperate government, Dominic Gaskin bluntly said that the AFC will not concern itself with policing anything APNU does, the party considers itself part of the government and cabinet and they intend to govern collectively. Carrying over that negotiator’s audaciousness into government was not necessary for the expression of the collective middle-class instinct.
So, they abdicated their responsibility flowing from the raison d’etre of the migratory voter class that the AFC itself created. Ordinary people and the typical “cross-over voter” probably accepted that the PNC will be the PNC and do PNC things (whatever that is), but the AFC must be seen as actively representing the interest of those who did not like some of those PNC things.
As I wrote in my last column, the formation of the AFC was born out of “pervasively growing sentiments that the two big parties were more and more pursuing party self-interest in ways that were neglecting the needs of the people.” This therefore became the very reason for the existence of the AFC, that is, to be seen as a tempering counter to the pursuit of (PNC) big-party self-interests that people felt were hurting them and from which they wanted to be rescued by the AFC.
Once the AFC was not substantially seen as the tempering factor in the coalition government, then it was the beginning of the end of the AFC. In summation, the AFC started its slow march to death the moment it took up those Cabinet seats.