By Kemol King
Coalition politics is meant to be a demonstration of unity in diversity. Different parties come together, bringing different strengths and ideas, all under one roof for the purpose of progress. But what happens when consultation is not evident and the coalition operates like a single party wielding the rest as appendages? The APNU+AFC alliance once offered the Guyanese people the promise of shared governance when it won office.
Back in 2015, when David Granger of APNU and Moses Nagamootoo of AFC inked the Cummingsburg Accord on Valentine’s Day, the symbolism wrote itself. It was an interruption of 23 years of PPP/C rule, a new political marriage built on the language of shared governance. However, the APNU+AFC did not do a great job of showing the Guyanese people that it truly operated as a coalition. The public perception (and this was reflected in statements from its own defectors) was that Guyana often got, not a partnership, but the PNCR in a trench coat, wielding the AFC as its subservient sidekick.
It would be unfair not to note that the smaller parties got their spoils from the coalition victory at the 2015 election, including ministerial posts. These included Keith Scott from the National Front Alliance, Sidney Allicock from the Guyana Action Party, Tabitha Sarabo-Halley from the Working People’s Alliance (WPA), and Jaipaul Sharma from the Justice for All Party (JFAP). The point of coalition politics is to have a diversity of thought and identity working in unison. But those appointments did little to preserve the actual voice or autonomy of the smaller parties.
As the years wore on, most of those parties did little to distinguish themselves in the public view, rarely issuing statements or engaging in visible individual advocacy, and seemed to exist only on paper.
Cracks in the relationship became apparent following the December 2018 no-confidence vote by Charrandass Persaud, and widened rapidly after the 2020 elections. The coalition lost the election, but rather than conceding gracefully, it attempted to force a fraudulent declaration. When that didn’t work, the APNU+AFC pivoted to claims about PPP/C electoral fraud and launched a campaign of misinformation. After the new government was sworn in, the ousted APNU+AFC coalition continued to disintegrate.
What is most troubling is that the coalition (what’s left of it) has not comprehensively addressed, with the public, the need for reform to its consultation mechanisms. The public is also unaware of any new structure to ensure that smaller parties have a clear say in decision-making, and if there is any sincere reckoning for the autocratic tendencies that made the coalition look more like the PNCR in disguise than a diverse partnership.
That failure is still happening now. When APNU announces new policies, when Aubrey Norton makes promises on behalf of a collective, it is still unclear whether the other constituent members have been consulted at all. This is bad optics and further adds to accusations that the coalition is a marriage of convenience and nothing else.
Coalition politics offer positive optics by giving voters the impression that proposals are shaped through broad consultation from diverse constituencies. The coalition will continue to lose if it fails to capitalise on this.
The past products of the breakdown
The Justice for All Party (JFAP), led by Chandra Narine Sharma, broke ranks in June 2020 after the national recount confirmed a PPP/C victory. Declaring “enough is enough,” Sharma said he could no longer remain silent. The party had long feared being frozen out of the coalition for speaking up, and that’s exactly what happened. By August, when it was time to determine parliamentary representation, JFAP wasn’t even consulted.
General Secretary Savitri Singh Sharma said the party had submitted a proposal but was ignored. It was punishment, she believed, for its call to accept the recount results.
The Working People’s Alliance (WPA) had already exited APNU weeks earlier, citing non-consultation. In its statement, the WPA said it had no real influence over coalition decisions and that the PNCR imposed its will on the rest. The situation was made worse by former President David Granger’s comment that there were “cardboard parties” in the alliance. The WPA, which had defended the coalition during the five-month election standoff, said it learned of Tabitha Sarabo-Halley’s selection as an MP through the media, and it viewed this as disrespectful and unprincipled.
These incidents demonstrate the dangers of discretionary decision-making in a partnership. Such dangers could have been avoided by employing an established, transparent mechanism as a replacement for discretion.
Sarabo-Halley later left the WPA but continued serving under the APNU banner. Like Jaipaul Sharma, who once likened David Granger to God, she eventually formed her own party. Sharma founded the Equal Rights and Justice Party; Sarabo-Halley launched the Guyana Nation Builders Movement. Both were accepted into APNU without consultation, sparking resentment within the PNCR, where members felt blindsided by David Granger’s unilateral decisions.
But the party most burned by the coalition experience was the AFC. Founded as a “third force” to hold both the PNCR and PPP/C accountable, the AFC lost that credibility after aligning with APNU. It supported the coalition’s 2020 election debacle, echoing flimsy voter fraud claims and standing by APNU’s attempt to subvert the results. To many, including its own defectors, the AFC had surrendered its independence. It would be a disservice not to note too, that the AFC fell from grace, not only because of its marriage to the PNCR-led APNU, but because of various political scandals involving its key members and the perceived mismanagement of major ministerial portfolios with which it was entrusted, especially oil and gas.
Since then, the AFC broke up with APNU and withered. Leader Nigel Hughes admitted the party is a shadow of its former self. After a public split from APNU, it skipped the 2023 local government elections, officially citing concerns about the credibility of the elections, but likely fearing embarrassment. Its organizing capacity is not the same. Even the PNCR had struggled to field candidates, allowing the PPP/C to take many seats unopposed.
Patchwork solutions
Meanwhile, the APNU itself has worked to offset its losses from these fallouts by poaching several members from the AFC. It has also brought in new blood. Recently, it welcomed three new parties: the Movement for Improvement, the Kingdom Liberation Movement, and the Legalize Cannabis Party. Several members have also walked away from the APNU, some even endorsing President Irfaan Ali’s bid for a second term. What this means, to some extent, is a replacement by the APNU, of experienced politicians with new blood. This may be perceived as a setback, as new blood does not have the political clout, network and knowledge that the experienced ones do. However, there is potential for new blood to offer even more than its predecessors. Time will tell.
This restructuring might give the impression of momentum, but it doesn’t answer the real questions: Has the coalition learned from its mismanaged relationships? And what is the ideological core of the coalition, which bonds its parties, aside from “we’re not the PPP”?
