The pathetic biology of the AFC
Kaieteur News – The AFC issued a press statement yesterday that has brought into stark reality the ancient saying that “whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.” The statement was released on the same day that the director of prison informed the nation that Guyana has 325 persons who are in jail (not on remand) for marijuana offenses.
This party when it was in government drafted and tabled an amendment to the anti-narcotic legislation and had it placed on the Order Paper of the House to be read and voted on. What is morally reprehensible about the politics of the AFC is that it forfeited the amendment even though the then opposition, PPP, agreed to vote in favor. The AFC has not seen it fit to at least offer an explanation.
What should make the Guyanese people think seriously about the mental health of the collective leadership of the AFC is the position that it has taken in relation to President Ali’s request for all past presidents to have a formal confabulation. The AFC has put a condition. When you read about that requirement, you must not laugh because the situation is too sad to be treated as hilarious.
The AFC’s demand is that the President must produce his first degree at the university level. How can any national organization be so asinine as to reduce politics of this divided nation to such an idiotic level? Any serious political party in this land can literally find thousands of demands to make on the president before it agrees to meet with him to have a dialogue of national importance.
It makes no sense trying to list some of these requests because we are talking about thousands. Yet among those thousands, the first one is the president’s first degree. How any human on Planet Earth can take such an organization seriously? And just as important is the question as to what the people in the leadership of the AFC think about this stance. What does Dr. Vincent Adams have to say about this descent into laughable miasma?
To really understand the mental instability that has taken over the AFC, let us repeat what Khemraj Ramjattan exclaimed yesterday. In voicing his opinion on the call for all former presidents to meet, Mr. Ramjattan as a prerequisite wants President Ali to show proof of his first degree before past president, David Granger, agrees to meet the head of state. Really, is this what the AFC has become? Really, is this the party that had seven ministers of government including the portfolio of prime minister?
The press release makes no mention of what was carried in a front-page comment in this newspaper that dozens of fishing licenses were issued when the AFC held the agriculture portfolio. But the on the resumption of parliament, the AFC intends to question the ruling benches on what it says were two secret fishing licenses granted recently.
The press statement avoided any reference to the revelation by Home Affairs Minister, Robeson Benn, that his predecessor, Ramjattan, signed over 60 firearm licenses without the applications being placed before the relevant board. This columnist knows that several strong supporters of the AFC literally ran behind minister Ramjattan for approval of a gun license but never received it. Who then constitute this 60? In its delivery yesterday, the AFC described the four-month-old administration as an autocracy. It would be nice if the AFC can tell Guyanese if the APNU+AFC was also an autocratic regime and if not, why.
This creeping mental instability had its genesis on March 3, when the AFC knew it had lost power. The next day, March 4, Cathy Hughes and Mr. Ramjattan held a press briefing at the PNC’s election command center at Lamaha and Camp Streets. They announced that the government had foiled a Russian attempt to rig the election. The men were deported.
The two AFC bigwigs never produced immigration records of the expulsion. In fact, no evidence was produced. But while the CARICOM recount was taking place, APNU+AFC displayed immigration papers purporting to show that Guyanese who were abroad on March 2 voted in the election. It has to be a disturbed mind to make such an outburst for two reasons. First, why wait until the election was over to tell the nation about the Russians? Why ask the nation to believe you without showing evidence?
Sadly, some AFC leaders are mentally disintegrating. Three are imbibing to the point of alcoholism. Another is going crazy babbling about ‘time that the country should be racially divided’. Another one is seriously ill and has not left home since the last week in July. The gods have destroyed them.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)
