THE AFC was further diminished this week by a major act of treachery by three of its executive members who defected to their parliamentary partner, the PNC. There are a lot to unpack here, but let me start with the AFC itself before touching on external forces.
I have been a member of the AFC since its inception. In fact, I played a major role in getting it off the ground during its formation. As such, I am well placed to give insights into the nature of the AFC interpersonal metaphysical evolution, right up to the present. There may be a lot more to what I write today (that I may have personal knowledge of), but I will stick only to the information already in the public domain.
THE AFC has a history of and has flirted with major treacherous behaviours over the years. To the extent where it seems as if the rails upon which the AFC train runs are built on treacherous foundations, so the AFC cannot avoid any political destination not constructed by subversion and double-dealing. At the formation of the AFC, the three main founders who were elected to serve on the PPP, PNC and GAP tickets separately, refused to resign their seats despite repudiating their respective lists and being asked by their former parties to vacate. Treachery? You decide.
In the early days of the AFC, there was a definitive agreement that the presidential candidature would be rotated between the two main co-founders, Ramjattan and Trotman. Trotman had the first outing in 2006, but as the 2011 season approached, Trotman reneged and began to make moves to be returned as the 2011 presidential candidate.
Despite Trotman being repelled by the African base in the AFC, his actions set in motion a series of internal haggling that took on some extremely strong racial overtones.
Trotman almost sat out the 2011 elections and Sheila Holder was slated to serve as prime ministerial candidate to Ramjattan. Holder subsequently fell seriously ill and Moses Nagamootoo crossed to the AFC and the dynamics, momentum and fortunes changed.
During the off-season, that intervening period between the 2006 and 2011 elections, Peter Ramsaroop joined the AFC and there were reports of him organising clandestine meetings with party groups to try to depose the party leader. As the story goes, the co-founders responded by double-crossing Ramsaroop’s ambitions and pushed him out.
Then we come to 2015. After the elections, the management committtee sat to assign ministerial portfolios and none was issued to Raphael Trotman. Based on what is contained in his book, it was an act of treachery against him. I was nominated by the AFC to be Minister of the Environment. All the ministerial candidates were seated in the waiting/briefing room, which stood adjacent to the ceremonies/credentials room and had light banter while we awaited the president’s arrival. The only person (among those who were eventually sworn in that day) who was not in the briefing room was Trotman. When the president arrived and we were ushered into the credentials room, Trotman appeared from a separate location. As it turned out, my name was never called; the indignity of that moment is for an entire column. Word in the AFC had it that Trotman had a clandestine early morning meeting (unbeknownst to the rest of his executives) with President Granger, where a secret deal was worked out to have him installed as minister. Since ministerial portfolios were subjected to an accord-driven quota, there had to be a sacrificial lamb: I was ripe for the slaughter.
In 2016, during the preparation and campaign for the Local Government Elections, Nigel Hughes abandoned the AFC election campaign and worked with a Bartica-based group that used the sobriquet BIGA. Juretha Fernandes was a chief organiser and candidate. Because of Hughes’ involvement in BIGA and the general reluctance of the AFC to discipline its middle-class corps, the party was forced to take a decision that its members can pursue independent groups. This means that both Hughes and Fernandes have a history of operating against their own party’s interest.
Further, I am also now alleging that it was some form of perceived treachery done to Nigel Hughes that led to his 2016 exit from the AFC, but its Hughes’ story to tell, not mine.
Then, of course, in 2018 there was the famous treacherous “Yes! Yes! Yes!”, of AFC’s Charrandass Persaud which reverberated around the world. There is more known about that than I could tell in a few lines.
Then in 2020, there was major artifice in an attempt to supplant the AFC’s official PM choice of Ramjattan with Moses Nagamootoo. An operation built on chicanery, instigated by elements in the PNC and supported by several senior figures in the AFC, for which Trotman is not, to my mind, an innocent bystander.
The subsequent naming of the list of AFC parliamentarians was not without its own mire of double-crossing and treachery, and so too was the last party leadership contest.
It came as no surprise to me that Ramsaroop, Duncan and Fernandes defected to the PNC.
More than three months ago I told friends, including Freddie Kissoon, that if the coalition is not reconstituted by mid-May, the “fantastic three” will defect. It has to do with assuring their own political survival.
If the AFC goes on its own and they are sidelined, their political future will be uncertain. If the AFC goes into a coalition, then they can suck the cane on both ends, hide under the AFC’s name, while working in the coalition outfit; but more on the APNU side to ensure post-election extraction.
With no agreement and the clock ticking, it makes all the political sense in the world to cut a direct deal with the PNC. Now the PNC believes it can sell itself as having some form of legitimacy in referring to APNU as the coalition, with elements of the AFC.
The remainder of the AFC leadership have themselves to blame. This was brewing since 2020 when they made no objections to Ramjattan’s use of all sorts of subterfuge to install the said “fantastic three”; rank opportunists who did not have a history of hard work and solid contribution to the party. They did not respond until the same trio, clearly honing their culture of subterfuge, was being used to essentially render the current founder-class middle-class executive membership impotent, with the blessings of Ramjattan. I have little doubt in my mind that Ramjattan had prior knowledge of the conspiratorial machinations of the “fantastic three.” I believe this trait will go with them and the script of their sojourn in the PNC will make an intriguing tale.