Former Region Five Councillor Abel Seetaram has resigned from the Alliance For Change (AFC), while claiming that the party’s leadership has lost its way.
Seetaram has also accused the party of not representing its regional members and allowing its coalition partner APNU to make all the decisions while they were in government from 2015 to this year.
In a letter to the party’s leader, Khemraj Ramjattan, Seetaram wrote, “My decision to part ways with the AFC since its formation is with a heavy heart after serious consideration to several matters that the party did not and I believe is unable to handle in making its own decisions since joining the APNU\PNC in 2015.”
Seetaram, who said he was a former national elected executive member, regional executive, and regional councillor, claimed that for five years under the coalition umbrella, the AFC leadership has allowed APNU or PNCR to make all the decisions for them at both the national and regional level, while failing to address the concerns of its members about the state of affairs.
He added that former Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo had claimed he chaired Cabinet “most of the time” in keeping with an agreement between the parties but allowed the APNU or PNCR to proceed with the closure of sugar estates, and increase in land rental fees and drainage and irrigation charges.
“The AFC has lost its political will in this country after five years, all because the leadership has failed and continued to fail the party because of self-centred motives and agenda[s] which I believe and do know most have,” he said.
According to Seetaram, the party he joined since its formation is no more as it has been swallowed by the PNCR.
Seetaram also accused the AFC’s leadership of not standing up for the rights of its members when allegedly being abused by APNU or PNCR officials over the past five years. He alleged that AFC regional officials were abused on a daily basis by some of the “PNC” Regional Executive Officers (REOs), while the leadership allowed it without even censuring its coalition partner for allowing the situation.
He wrote, “We all have a heart, we have a con-science and like me, many of my AFC brothers and sisters were feeling the pain and were eaten from inside with what was going on and we can’t say anything. Well, I said what I had to and faced what I had to.”
During his tenure as a regional councillor Seetaram was convicted of wounding, which he later appealed in the High Court, and was also arrested over the assault of a policeman.
