Former parliamentarian and member of the People’s National Congress Reform (PNC/R), James Bond, finds the Alliance for Change’s (AFC) split from the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) to be a most regressive step. Bond said emphatically that neither have the following to win General and Regional elections independently.
As a weakened opposition force, given that they are now two camps instead of one, Bond in an exclusive interview with Guyana Standard said that the parties are now susceptible to the cunning political machinations of the PPP/C administration.
Bond said history shows that coalition politics can provide powerful political outcomes. He said the APNU+AFC’s victory in the 2015 elections is the most recent evidence of this. The businessman who still keeps his thumb on the nation’s political pulse, recalled that just before the 1992 elections, the People’s Progressive Party formed a civic arm to increase its chances of a win. That Civic faction consisted of individuals who were not members of the PPP but were also not hostile towards its vision for leadership.
He shared that the PPP/C even took its political might a step further by informally coaliting with the business community to remain in power for several years.
“So the evidence is in our history to show that a form of coalition politics can provide results in terms of winning elections,” expressed Bond.
He continued, “It is on this basis I think they will be ineffective without each other, especially if the ultimate goal is to win an election…It is a regressive step for both of them because they have now moved from a position of strength to a position of weakness.”
Bond said the AFC by itself is not going to command the respect of the electorate and the same will obtain for APNU. “So you don’t have respect or the following and you are two camps instead of one and now the PPP/C has an option of wooing one side or the other, or playing both against each other. There are a lot of options there for the ruling party in the face of a weakened opposition,” Bond stated.
As separate entities, he said the opposition now presents itself as weak and disjointed.
As for the reasoning behind the AFC’s decision to go separate ways, Bond said he suspects the party is trying to occupy the “third force spot.” But even that he posited, is a miscalculated decision. Bond said, “Believe it or not, a third political force is emerging. And they are seeing it and they want to occupy it but it is too late. They got involved with the APNU and left. They won’t be trusted. So that third force space is up for grabs and they have misread it.”
He opined that the main purpose of the AFC in its marriage to the APNU was to fire up voters in the middle class; attract the business community; and essentially, pull people who would not normally vote for APNU.
“For some reason, as everyone knows, the AFC stopped engaging the people they were supposed to keep on top of like the disenfranchised PPP supporters. That was their job and they didn’t do it from 2015 to 2020,” expressed the former parliamentarian.
In spite of that and other shortcomings, Bond maintained that the opposition block stands a better chance together than apart.
