Attorney Charrandas Persaud walks from AFC over lack of recognition
Attorney Charrandas Persaud has left the Alliance for Change (AFC) and says an even bigger surprise will follow when he declares which party he would be joining.
Persaud, who told Stabroek News that he left the AFC because he was treated as second class and taken for granted, said he would make his decision known at the end of October.He lamented that the AFC has failed to recognise the contribution he has made in terms of attracting supporters for the party in Berbice.
Persaud’s departure comes on the heels of the recent exit of economist Dr Tarron Khemraj, businessman Rab Mukraj, Political Science Professor Asquith Rose and US-based financier Shamir Ally, who left the AFC’s New York chapter.
Khemraj has said that the party has been suffering from “self-inflicted wounds” for a long time.
Persaud hosted a popular live call-in television programme on Saturday evenings on Berbice’s DTV Channel 8, where he highlighted issues for the party.
He said it was because of the attitude of the leadership regarding the programme that he felt he has had enough of the AFC and decided to quit.
According to him, the party sent a taped programme to the television station to be aired last Saturday evening without informing him. It was only when he had called the station to arrange for three chairs to be set up for him to appear on air with two guests that he was made aware of the change.
Persaud said that after his decision to leave was made known earlier this week, no one from the AFC’s leadership contacted him.
When this newspaper contacted him he was preparing to leave the country to “wild it up for the weekend.” He said he had not “been able to do that for a long time because of them [referring to his commitment for hosting of the programme for the AFC].”
Another bone of contention, Persaud said, was that “the party was not giving a lot in terms of accountability and that was what we were fighting the PPP for.”
In wake of recent defections, AFC Chairman Nigel Hughes has said that the party remains both cohesive and committed to the struggle for a better Guyana.
“While the party is disappointed with how the issue was handled we remain focused and dedicated to the struggle for the true democratisation of Guyana,” Hughes said in a statement issued last week after the disclosure of the fact that the New York-based members had switched their support to main opposition coalition APNU.
Issues with the way the AFC voted in the National Assembly recently on enabling measures for the Amaila Falls Hydropower Project—voting with government in support of them—have been cited as being among the reasons for the departure of the New York-based members. This week the party declared that it would not be “swayed into a pre-election coalition” with either the PPP/C or APNU, insisting that it would remain independent.