The reason I broke with the post-2015 government

Jan 04, 2019 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon 1 Comment

I have answered several questions as to how I could support Charrandass Persaud’s no- confidence motion. People keep telling me that the Coalition should have lasted until 2020 when elections are due.
If I believed that the PPP would win in March 2019, I would have advised Charrandass not to vote yes. But I honestly feel that there will not be a majority government in March 2019. That is good, because the PPP or the PNC will be prevented from dominating the state.
My attitude towards the PPP remains. I cannot support it electorally. But APNU+AFC will not be good for Guyana. I have seen the APNU+AFC Coalition in action and they are devoid of leadership qualities. They are overflowing with mundane existence and they are not the answer to Guyana’s future.
All types of possibilities exist with the March election. I will endorse third parties that I find palatable. I welcome ANUG, the Amerindian party, and the outfit Charrandass is thinking of forming. Guyana is not going to move forward with a PPP regime or a PNC+AFC administration. If we could have a minority government that has to work with other parties, it is a positive beginning. Because of that, I welcome the early election.
I was emotionally enthralled with the defeat of the PPP in May 2015. But soon after, literally days, I got a rude awakening. I will list three incidents that led to my divorce from the post-2015 dispensation, one of which the average person will not treat as serious. But it was for me.
The first one has lacerated my psyche. It occurred just a day after the official announcement of the election results. I have lamented this anomaly so often that I should just forget it. But it led to my complete estrangement from the AFC and it has stuck permanently in my mind.
In their conference room to select their seven ministers, some AFC leaders decided that they would offer the Ministry of the Environment to a friend of one of their leaders. This is unheard of anywhere in the world. What about your soldiers that fought in the trenches for you to win power?
If that information is shocking to you, then read on.
From May 2015 to this present date, the AFC leadership has rejected repeated requests from some importantly placed elements in the AFC to have a junior minister in the country’s largest ministry – agriculture. It was clear to me in May 2015 that the AFC was up to no good; that it was an early victim of power drunkenness and would not do a thing to change Guyana. I was proven right.
The second depravity carries the same incessant lamentation as the first. It is about the immorality of politics and the politics of immorality. It is about the colossal extension of the barriers around parliament when the House is in session. The AFC and APNU in 2012 successfully passed a motion in the National Assembly to remove those barriers, which at the time were harmless cordons that stretched for only two blocks. At the first sitting of Parliament in July 2015, the barriers were extended. Today they cover six streets, some of which are not near to parliament at all.
It was clear to me back in July 2015 that this government was not going to be sensitive to the feelings of the Guyanese people and would do whatever pleased them. That barrier thing was an early warning sign.
After three and a half years in power, look at the assessments of its critics. The list includes giants like Nigel Hughes, David Hinds, Lincoln Lewis, the Kaieteur News and Stabroek News, that did so much to expose the PPP’s elected dictatorship.
Finally, the third episode, I could no longer accept APNU+AFC in office after what it did to Lincoln Lewis and David Hinds at the Chronicle. Do the young people in Guyana know the history of the activism of these two men? It must be a combination of 100 hundreds. We are talking about the praxis of two men that goes way back to the beginning of the early seventies.
This country fought to free the state media from predatory tentacles of the demonic clutches of the PPP, only to find that our new government has decided that these men must no longer be columnists with the Chronicle. That is a throwback to the era of the PPP’s tyranny. From President through to Prime Minister down to the ministers and the political appointees in state institutions, none of them has the moral authority to make that decision.