The revised Cummingsburg Accord which sets out the terms of the APNU and AFC political alliance has been breached yet again. This time, however, the violation is of such an order that AFC General Secretary David Patterson has felt it necessary to resign from his post. He was the one who had negotiated the provisions of the Accord on behalf of his party, with APNU being represented by leader Mr David Granger.
The two parties had agreed that where the coalition won a Regional Democratic Council, APNU would chair it, while the Vice-Chair would go to the AFC. The agreement functioned as it should in Region Seven, but where Regions Four and Ten were concerned the applicable clauses were contravened. In the case of Region Four where the coalition holds 20 of the 35 seats, former GDF Captain Daniel Seeram was elected chairman after all the APNU+AFC members voted in favour of him. The 14 PPP/C councillors voted for their nominee, Deoraj Nauth. There was one person absent from the session, namely the member from Change Guyana.
When it came to the Vice-Chair, however, matters took an unexpected turn. The PPP/C nominated Desmond Morian, while the APNU+AFC’s nominee was Samuel Sandy of the PNCR. But then a second name materialised from among the coalition councillors, namely that of Neilson McKenzie, an AFC member. Under the agreement Mr McKenzie should have been elected, but 14 of the coalition councillors cast their vote for Mr Sandy and only five for Mr McKenzie. Since all 14 of the PPP/C members present voted for Mr Morian, there was a tie, which was broken by Mr Seeram using his casting vote in favour of Mr Sandy. When asked by this newspaper about this decision, he responded that he chose the coalition nominee with the most votes.
The story in Region Ten was even more remarkable. There the coalition holds 15 of the 18 seats, an unassailable majority, which is broken down into ten for APNU and five for the AFC. There the AFC nominee for Vice-Chair Norris King, told this newspaper that about three days before the elections he had heard that APNU would not abide by the agreement, but he just thought people were trying to be mischievous. He was soon to be disabused of that notion, however, when on the day of voting PNCR General Secretary Amna Ally informed him that he would not have her party’s support. As a consequence Mr King decided not to accept the nomination rather than create conflict.
We reported that Ms Ally was present at the Region Ten election, and was said to have influenced her party members to vote for a PNCR candidate as Vice-Chair.
In Region Seven, in contrast, matters proceeded in line with the requirements of the Accord. In this region, however, APNU+AFC hold only eight of the 15 seats, while the PPP/C has six and the Liberty and Justice Party, one. There APNU member Kenneth Williams was elected Chair and Kamala Persaud of the AFC, Vice-Chair.
When speaking to Stabroek News Mr King described the reaction of his party to the flouting of the agreement as “shocked”. They shouldn’t be. After five months of the dominant element in the coalition blatantly trying to rig an election as well as use every stratagem known to human invention to block the declaration of a genuine result, what makes them think they are dealing with people who respect covenants? Furthermore, considering that the AFC meekly went along with APNU for the whole of that period, what makes them think that the PNCR considers it has to take them seriously? The last-named party will simply do what it feels like and expect the AFC to go along with it, just as it has always done.
There is something else too. The AFC is not dealing with a traditional political party, even by seriously flawed Guyanese standards. There is a certain militarised element creeping into the PNCR in the form of ex-officers, who have displaced some of the old party hands in Parliament, and another of whom has now been elected chair of Region Four. The lesson from the approach of Messrs Granger and Joseph Harmon is that in their view ends justify means, and those ends involve winning at all costs. Compromise is something of an alien concept, and alongside this goes a very short-term vision. Immediate victories are what count, and for that reason accords and agreements are matters of expediency, nothing else.
As an aside, it is perhaps worth mentioning that it may be one of the ironies of history that if Mr Granger had had greater political sense and a longer-term view, he would have gone to election in March 2019 instead of 2020. By so doing he would have knocked out the bottom plank of the PPP/C’s accusation that the PNC intended to rig the election as before, and confirmed APNU as a democratic party. At the same time he would have shown up Mr Donald Ramotar’s attempt to avoid an election by proroguing Parliament in a very adverse light. Since there would have been none of the shenanigans of that period between March 2019 and March 2020, he might not have lost the votes which he did on March 2 this year. In short, he would have stood a much better chance of winning a poll last year than this, and at worst might have faced a hung Parliament. As it is, even now the PPP/C has only a one-seat majority.
It is short-term thinking again which may have persuaded the PNCR to jettison an agreement in favour of ensuring immediate control in two key regions. Those regions – Ten and Four − are their heartlands, where they may feel they do not need the AFC. In the case of Region Seven, however, where their margin is small, they were prepared to abide by the terms of the Accord because there they thought the AFC might bring in votes, and to bypass them might incur an electoral price.
Never mind its reputation in other departments, this kind of cavalier approach to political pacts on its own will mark the party as one not to be trusted, and if, somewhere down the line when different demographics are in play, it is seeking new partners, its reputation for perfidy might make it difficult to find any. And without partners, despite what Messrs Granger and Harmon seem to think, it will not be coming back into government in the foreseeable future. That said, the AFC has to recognise that its own record this year particularly, is anything but honourable, something it has yet to come to terms with.
But for the moment its concern is how to confront APNU’s deceit. What must be especially infuriating is that APNU General Secretary Harmon has said that the party is investigating why the agreement disintegrated during the election of the Chair and Vice-Chair of two Regional Democratic Councils. “The situation which arose at the elections is under investigation,” he was quoted as saying. It was an astonishing statement. If this happened without the knowledge of anyone in the party leadership, then Messrs Granger and Harmon have a very serious situation on their hands; control of the party is eluding them. Other than that, this has the unmistakeable aroma of raw hypocrisy.
In a press release the AFC has said that it “remains committed to its principles of liberal democracy and the advancement of coalition politics as the best solution for our ethnically diverse country.” It also announced there would be an emergency meeting of the party’s National Executive Council on Sunday “to discuss the way forward.” It is not altogether clear to anyone outside the party what it can do about the situation, provided it wants to stay in the coalition because it would like to retain seats. Anything it could do it should have done a long time ago when it was part of government, and the appearance is that there is very little leverage it can bring to bear against the senior partner at this stage. Everyone waits to see, therefore, how it will square the circle.
