IN the midst of still active negotiations between the APNU and the AFC to reach a formal agreement to rerun to an electoral coalition partnership for the 2025 election, Juretha Fernandes blindsided the AFC by conniving with two other AFC parliamentarians to work out an alternative deal with APNU that landed her the prime ministerial spot on the APNU ticket.
If ever there was a picture of Machiavellianism in Guyanese politics, this situation is an apt depiction. During the negotiations for a second reboot of the APNU+AFC coalition, AFC threw its negotiating heavyweights at APNU. The AFC even brought in reinforcements from Jamaica in the person of Alston Stewart, a veteran politician linked to the PNP of Jamaica and a personal friend of former Jamaican Prime Minister, PJ Patterson.
With all that firepower, it is not surprising that AFC attempted to carry such a hard bargain. They started by making loud, and at times, unrealistic proposals to APNU. Some could even be considered barefaced. I digress, after sharing parliamentary camaraderie for over 13 years; three plus years in joint opposition to President Ramotar, five years together in government and another five in opposition to President Ali, it will make compelling mind-boggling analysis to try to understand why there was still so much distrust between the AFC and the PNC.
Given the proposals put forward by the AFC for the coalition 2025 reboot, it is clear the AFC did not find PNC to be a trustworthy partner. The voting public picked up on this and asked themselves, if these long-term partners cannot trust each other, why should we trust either of them? The answer to this question is easily visible to even those with severe political visual impairment.
Those in the AFC fancied themselves as skilled negotiators, and by their own cockiness, transitioned from negotiating to grandstanding. While on their grandstanding odyssey, they became unsuspecting sitting ducks.
In a grand plan to supplant Nigel Hughes, Juretha and the rest of Ramjattan’s created ‘Apple Dumpling Gang’ were busy working out an alternative clandestine deal with the PNC. This gave the PNC every incentive to stall the coalition talks.
With all the political experience in Alston Stewart, Raphael Trotman, David Patterson, Cathy Hughes and others on the AFC executive, they were outfoxed by a rank political neophyte whose only known MO is subterfuge. As a perennial opportunist, Juretha Fernandes’ politics is littered with political guile.
While only a political toddler in the AFC, Juretha in 2016, was instrumental in the rise of a group called Bartica Independence Green Alliance (BIGA) to challenge the APNU+AFC at the LGE. She fancied herself as having solid political support in Bartica. Word on the street, at the time, was that she harboured the grandiose thoughts of being Mayor of Bartica. The people of Bartica absolutely and unequivocally rejected Juretha Fernandes and BIGA. When things did not work out for her, she abandoned her co-conspirators, scrapped the group, and crawled back to the AFC.
Juretha then worked her way into Centre for Change through the youth arm and enchanted certain busybodied leaders with her conniving magic. The youth leader, Cynthia Rutherford, was ousted and she ended up in her place on the executive.
Later, Juretha found her way as the Confidential Secretary of PM Nagamootoo, on Ramjattan’s recommendation. Then a rift developed between Ramjattan and Nagamootoo over 2020 PM Candidacy for the APNU+AFC. Many AFC insiders believe that Juretha was a double agent pretending to support Nagamootoo while firmly in Ramjattan’s camp. Whomever succeeds as the PM, she would have been in their good graces. You do not have to guess what her route to parliament was; it is one for the ages. On her next political adventure, the word in the AFC has it that she was part of less than honourable attempts to wrest leadership from the middle-class formation. Nigel Hughes thwarted those plans and since then he had crosshairs on the head for the next round of political subterfuge.
I do not believe that this is the end of Juretha’s political dagger wielding.
During her odyssey with BIGA, Nigel Hughes provided financial and logistic support for the group against contrary advice from many of us in the AFC. Today, he is learning the harsh lessons of supporting roguery and political sleight of hand, it came back to bite him. This is a lesson Aubrey Norton is yet to learn.
This partnership between Juretha and Norton on the one hand and Juretha and her conspiring AFC compatriots, on the other, are all in danger of her pangs of deceit. When it suits her purpose of opportunism, she will not hesitate to pull out her dagger.
Either Norton is perceptive or by sheer luck, he managed to take an action which exposed Juretha and gave him the upper hand. He sent Juretha to headline a public meeting in her hometown of Bartica. As they did to Juretha and BIGA in 2016, they did to Juretha and APNU in 2025, a resounding rejection. Returning to her hometown, riding high as prime ministerial candidate in the largest opposition party which has always won that town and region, one would expect a major wave of support. It was a major embarrassment, if there ever was one, Juretha was speaking to a tiny group of people made up of activists accompanying her from Georgetown and local party activists from Bartica. Aubrey knows that Juretha does not have any constituency, even in her place of birth. He can now use that information to silence Juretha and the entire AFC defecting cohort, whenever the need arises. That script is still writing itself, hold for the intrigue to come.
Ultimately, Juretha is campaigning with hopes of replacing Brig. Mark Phillips as PM. The two candidates could not be more contrasting. PM Phillips is a bastion of trustworthiness with a rich track record of dedication and service; we can close our eyes and trust him to act honourably.
Given our system of government, the PM is the natural successor to the president, and it is important that we do not choose a party whose prime minister could connive her way to the presidency, or the president has to constantly keep looking over his shoulders wondering what his 2IC may be scheming. Neither do we want a situation where our president has to devise schemes of his own to keep his PM at bay. Avoid the prospects of this kind of drama and re-elect Mark and Irfaan.