Born in controversy, the Alliance For Change – a newish party with oldish faces – has had a difficult infancy
One of the most extraordinary spectacles in Guyana’s extraordinary political history was the Alliance For Change’s unforgettable launching ceremony on Saturday October 29, 2005. The birth of a new party with an old face was a bewildering phenomenon.
Marriage of inconvenience: AFC leader Raphael Trotman and candidate Gaumattie Singh before the 2006 general elections.
Asgar Ally, formerly a People’s Progressive Party Minister of Finance who founded his own Guyana Democratic Party; Sheila Holder who was actually representing the Guyana Action Party-Working People’s Alliance in the National Assembly at that time; Khemraj Ramjattan, a former chairman of the Progressive Youth Organisation and executive member of the People’s Progressive Party; Raphael Trotman, a former member of the Central Executive Committee of the People’s National Congress Reform and Anthony Vieira, formerly of the United Force and who would shortly afterwards enter the National Assembly on the People’s National Congress Reform-One Guyana ticket, were all on stage.
Controversy arose from the start. The Alliance seemed to have been the brainchild of three politicians – Sheila Holder, Khemraj Ramjattan and Raphael Trotman. They had all been elected to the National Assembly on the tickets from other parties. They all refused to surrender their seats even after they had severed relations with their parent parties and, evidently, no longer wished to represent the interests of the people who elected them.....
Arithmetic
The Alliance’s 2nd Delegates’ Convention held in July last year under the optimistic theme “From third force to First Choice.” The three leaders – Holder, Ramjattan and Trotman – predictably, in the tradition of local political party leadership, returned the top three to the posts they held from the start.
Trotman went on to claim rather extravagantly that, apart from the urban centres of Georgetown, New Amsterdam, and Linden, delegates and observers to the Convention had come from Aishalton, Orealla, Port Kaituma, Moruca, Kwakwani, New York, Canada and the United Kingdom. He felt that in the few short years of its existence that the Alliance was already “well on its way to achieving greatness.” Greatness, however, is more than a well-attended convention....
....a few months later...what is the attendance like at their campaign launch?
The Alliance For Change (AFC) Saturday night launched its 2011 general election campaign, promising to be tough on racial discrimination, drug trafficking and corruption while tackling unemployment.
Addressing close to 300 people at the Ocean View International Convention Centre, AFC Presidential candidate, Khemraj Ramjattan announced that ethnic audits would be done before taking major decisions.
Guyana Review cont'd....The case of Gaumatie Singh, Secretary of the Alliance and a candidate in the elections, symbolized the dangers in a congregation of persons who were united more by their opposition to other parties than anything else. Upset that she was not selected for a seat in the National Assembly, Singh angrily announced her resignation on September 8, taking the trouble to call a press conference to publicise an e-mail exchange between herself and the party’s presidential candidate Raphael Trotman. Singh said that she had been informed by party executives that she was promised a seat once the Alliance had secured more than three seats and was shocked to learn that she had not been nominated.
The lesson of the fallout was to show that the Alliance had ignored the ethnic factor. Singh claimed that persons in the Pomeroon-Supenaam Region had voted for the Alliance only because they thought that she was the person who was going to be selected “to give representation on Indian people’s behalf” in the Assembly. She warned Trotman that he had “made a grave mistake” in selecting someone else and accused him of being “another PNC dictator.” For good measure, she also threatened to destroy the entire party.
Alliance Chairman Khemraj Ramjattan in a report carried in the Indo-Caribbean World on the November 25, 2009 on his visit to Toronto, similarly, told a meeting of the emigrant Guyanese that if there is going to be an AFC government then three cabinet ministerial positions should go to members of the Diaspora.” Could this be the policy of the Alliance?
Ramsaroop in an interview with the Guyana Review in October last year, explained that, “within one year of assuming office, we will have in place, in the police force, officers from the Scotland Yard, Scottish Police Force, or some other credible jurisdiction in key positions in the force. Within that same year, or certainly no later than the end of two years, we will also identify a cadre of officers who will take over from the overseas officers when they leave.”
He added, with a comment that could have been taken from the ROAR playbook, “With respect to having the force ethnically representative, the real issue is that of legitimacy in the eyes of the public at large. From an objective standpoint the force can be absolutely professional, but from a subjective standpoint the citizens may not accept it as legitimate if it is dominated by any one race which would lead to tensions in the society.”
The Alliance has to face several challenges. Its most recent came only a few weeks ago. Since the announcement of the results of the 2006 General and regional Elections on August 31, the Alliance complained that the Guyana Elections Commission had miscalculated the number of votes the party had received in the Upper Demerara-Berbice Region. The Alliance claimed that the Commission ought to have allocated it a sixth seat, which, it argued, was mistakenly awarded to the People’s Progressive Party Civic. GECOM nevertheless arranged to have the flawed figures published in the Official Gazette on the October 19.
Chief Justice Ian Chang on February 16, 2010 dismissed the elections petition filed by the Alliance on the grounds of procedural non-compliance as the AFC had failed to file an affidavit of service immediately after bringing the petition to the court.
Still not quite five years old, the Alliance For Change needs to grow up quickly and learn from the experience of The United Force. That party had the ability to capture over 16 per cent of the popular vote in its heyday and did become a real centre force in the National Assembly. Today it is a zombie.
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