OPINION: The Split -PNC, AFC way

Last Updated on Tuesday, 1 April 2025, 19:03 by Writer

By GHK Lall

The split is causing the PNC and AFC a fit. More than one. Perhaps, they will have it finalized in time for the 2030 elections, if those are still around. America is thinking of getting rid of them. Guyana should. However, there is another consideration: while the PNC and AFC are talking, negotiating, backtracking, shifting, floating, and returning to the same place with the same split unresolved, they may not be around for 2030. Out to pasture, over the deep end. These are among the reasons that I have spiritually disconnected from elections 2025. Look at the landscape: Jagdeo or Trump. I have already settled mentally for the lesser, ah, challenge. DC, here I come.

While the PNC and AFC are sparring over the split, I recall that 1968 movie aptly named The Split, starring Jim Brown, and 11 other cinematic heavyweights. They had a falling out over (good guess), the split of the booty. Here in Guyana, it is the madness of local politics imitating MGM. Guyanese are splitting apart from the pressures of a PPP-induced cost-of-living crisis (I say so!), skimpy oil money, poor governance, and poorer leadership, and the PNC and AFC are wasting their time and the interest of Guyanese about who gets how much. Cut the bull, fellas. Somehow the impression can’t be shaken that these men are not serious, hollow. I remember donuts—an oversized hole in the middle. Jagdeo and Ali are dead serious about winning; the PNC-AFC are not serious about anything. Like the Rev. Jim Jones, they make fools of their believers. Thank God, I already decided on my role in the elections.

Then, there is the quicksand, suck-sand, and tar sands where the PNC and AFC are also, once again, stuck. It is about who is going to be number one. Did dese chaps taak to Mr. Jagdeo? Mr. Aubrey Norton showed that he is the smartest one in the room. He got the PNC to issue that binding resolution. Whatever the combination, permutation, construction, there is that nonnegotiable condition: no discussion. The leader must be PNC through and through. If this means that one of those party legends now long departed has to be brought back from wherever he or she is, then that’s it. The Castilians did that with Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, better known as El Cid, when they kept him past his time, while strapped to the back of a warhorse. I can’t believe that I am saying this, but this is the Magnificent Province called Guyana. Here, Jagdeo has Ali doing the honors for the PPP, with the latter actually believing that he is a real-life El Cid. So, what’s the trouble with the PNC doing the same to skirt around the norms, while taking a page out of Jagdeo’s book? It is called fixing and overcoming obstacles.

Now, here are Guyanese in a month that begins by honoring fools. It sets the stage for the other days for the rest of the month, with the PNC and AFC giving themselves a head start over an irreconcilable split, and who the leader should be. Candidly, the AFC falls in the category of the lost brigade, more baggage that requires carriage. Try this tuff one: what does it bring to the table? Numbers, somebody! Of course, the AFC’s value is to sanitize the PNC, meaning, make it more sweet smelling, and looking better than it is. Now I understand why Bharrat the braggart is having such a good time with landslide and whatever new word he just learned. Oh lawd! Will somebody please be kind to Guyanese? All this oil, and all this squabbling and wrangling about splitting that does not exist. I have heard about splitting the atom. Whoever heard of splitting nothing are miles ahead of me.

All the woes of their still loyal supporters, and they’re still fighting over who gets what and when. How about getting moving now, past the decision-making constipation that freezes the two parties, my friends and brothers. On the other hand, it could be a clever ploy by both the PNC and AFC. Leave the young one to go out there by himself and collect all the blows. By himself alone. Both the PNC and AFC have manifested a marked disinclination to mix it up with the PPP, and get their fancy shoes dirty. So, all the blows, foul and fouler, fall on the undecided newcomer’s head. I am beginning to discern the strategy of the two older parties, which leads me to believe that this business about the split is a farce. It is them calling in sick, because they are fearful of facing the music. The kind that the PPP has been playing in Essequibo and Berbice, plus those sneaky ones under the cover of law and maintaining a close relationship with the US.

In thinking of all this, it is hard to believe that the most crucial elections in Guyana’s splendid history are around the corner, and the PNC and AFC are unable to get out of the starting gate. Are these comrades for real? It could be that I am having a real hallucination. Like a million other Guyanese.