In less than two years, with nothing but a smattering of power, the Alliance for Change (AFC), which promised so much hope to so many, has become as morally questionable as any of our historic political parties. Why has this happened? The party simply became infected with the normal diseases of the political process: opportunity and hubris!
However, while the recent events may be troublesome for the AFC, they are positive for the people of Guyana. Its relative youth had allowed that party to bask in the sun of moral superiority; giving encouragement to the many idealists who claim that Guyana can only be saved if so-called good
people take power! While not denying that there are some good people and that we should encourage their proliferation, this was not a sustainable position, and I hope that experience with the AFC has now helped to dampen such ardour.
I have continually argued that we cannot depend upon finding good people or that even if we do, they will remain good confronted daily by the temptations of mammon. What our country needs most of all are good systems that can lead to the establishment of proper policies and to the auditing and disciplining of defaulters.
The party’s recent positions on the Amaila hydro project, the Local Government Bills and the issues surrounding Mr Nigel Hughes and his wife Cathy appear to be the straws that broke the camel’s back and gave rise to the defection of some of its most intellectually active members. Of course, senior people are always leaving and joining political parties, and the AFC will no doubt survive, even if with less exalted moral credentials.
Given our constitutional arrangements, it would be to the advantage of the AFC and of all those who wish to see political change, for the party to target supporters of the PPP/C. This is largely because taking a significant number of votes from APNU alone will not lead to political change, as the PPP will easily keep at least the presidency.
Since the AFC knows that it is in its present advantageous position largely because it was able to take votes from the PPP/C, its leadership is very sensitive to what it perceives the PPP/C constituency wants and invariably this usually means what the PPP/C, through its unrelenting propaganda, has encouraged its supporters to want.
A significant number of PPP/C supporters believe that Amaila is a good project, which for various reasons is being subverted by the opposition. By leaning towards the PPP/C on the issue, the AFC was seeking to stay as close as possible to what it saw as the significant prevailing sentiment among PPP/C supporters. This opportunism placed it in the classical position of the tail wagging the dog. Furthermore, the leadership, convinced of its rightness, refused to give sufficient weight to its intellectual membership who viewed the Amaila project as some kind of a scam being perpetrated by the PPP/C on the people of Guyana.
If the party’s leadership attitude on Amelia appeared cocksure, it was on the local government bills that we saw a true exhibition of hubris and opportunism! Wrongly or rightly, the AFC’s leadership believe that the PPP/C is weak and is weakening to the AFC’s advantage and was hell bent on taking the opportunity to test its strength regardless of how meaningful that election would have been.
Thus Mr Khemraj Ramjattan stated that the party was willing to go to local government elections with or without the proposed reforms being made!
Most people are always willing to forgive political opportunism but where the AFC has shot its moral self in the foot and has left too many tongues wagging is in relation to the position it has taken on the issue of Mr Nigel Hughes and Ms Cathy Hughes’ conflict of interest in relation to the Amaila project.
Firstly, since the Hughes’ relationship with the Amaila project could only have been possible with the knowledge and concurrence of the PPP/C regime, which, according to the AFC is evil incarnate, it begs the question of why the PPP/C would have made such a concession if not to gain some advantage and what advantage could it have foreseen?
Secondly, we need to note that Amaila is not the first conflict of interest issue of this sort with which the AFC has had to deal. In 2012, Stabroek News reported as follows: “The AFC yesterday played down concerns that party leader Khemraj Ramjattan is in a conflict of interest position over his legal representation of the Fedders Lloyd Corporation, which believes it was cheated of a contract to build the specialty hospital at Turkeyen.” (“Ramjattan legal representation of Indian hospital bidder not an issue:” SN: 30/08/12).
On that occasion, Mr Nigel Hughes, whose party already knew that he was in a similar position in relation to the Amaila project, defended as follows: “There is no rule in the profession that stops Mr Ramjattan, who is a practicing attorney, from plying his trade as a lawyer.” Of course, the issue was never one of Mr Ramjattan having the right to practice his profession. It was whether professionals have the right to take the opportunity to serve two masters on the same issue!
Nonetheless, the AFC was able to quell the public concern in 2012 and may have thought that it was on safe ground on the Amaila issue. This is however not the case and Mr Hughes has wisely accepted that a conflict existed, apologised to the public and resigned his position as party chairperson.
Notwithstanding that we have not heard very much from Ms Hughes herself or from the party about her situation. It is inexplicable, and can only be explained by the heightened vanity of actors who have lost all touch with reality and now take the public for granted, for the AFC not to feel the need for a reasonable time to elapse before allowing Mr Hughes to return to his chairmanship! The party is now paying the price and will continue to do so for some time!
