Johnny Mathis sings about the key at the AFC funeral
Kaieteur News – The AFC had been in force five years and I must have produced about 2,000 columns of which hundreds, I repeat, may have literally been hundreds of caustic, tempestuous and academic condemnations of the meat dead that the AFC became after it joined the PNC and WPA to share state power. The term dead meat is not mine but was coined by the leader, Khemraj Ramjattan.
There has been a flood of resignations since defeating APNU + AFC legally and fairly in the March general election last year. The media has continued to highlight this exodus. What hasn’t made the news is that there have been literally hundreds of unwritten resignations, which means people are gone but they are so contemptible as the cockfighting leaders (figuratively speaking) in the AFC that sending couldn’t be bothered and a piece of paper.
Take Trevor Williams; he is as prominent as anyone on the list of resignations since the election loss. Williams told me that he is long gone and wrote a resignation letter from last year, planning to take him to Ramjattan but he has not considered it urgent. Williams’ attitude tells a story of two kinds of resignations. One is paper based. Here you have a document with a signature saying, “I’m done.”
The other resignation does not exist but it does exist. It is not a paper document. Our voice is not derived. It is action based. The individual’s action tells you that he / she has left the organization. The most important manifestation of the second type of resignation is Leonard Craig.
Craig was the Deputy Secretary General and regarded as the closest person to joining the AFC hierarchy, dominated by the gang of six – Alstrom Stewart of Jamaica and in Guyana, Dominic Gaskin, Raphael Trotman, Khemraj Ramjattan, David Patterson (aka – a climber mount because he climbed the gate of the Arthur Chung Conference Center and got stuck) and Cathy Hughes (aka, the Russian woman after her miscarriage that the Russians came to rig the election in March).
Craig has not tendered his resignation of any kind but Craig is gone from the AFC. I was informed that many executive and second tier leaders like Craig were gone (to Cove and John as they said when I was a little boy) or very inactive, very far from the AFC or rode into ‘ r sunset.
I was informed that three AFC senators could surrender their seats in 2022 thereby quitting politics. I have been informed that Raphael Trotman, in the upcoming congress in June, will not compete against any leadership position. I have two personal friends who live next door to the AFC head office – Dawn and Raymond Persaud. I visit them often. You have to see the AFC head office.
No one has been to that place for months. You can see the cobwebs hanging all over the place. There’s no question about it – tree ants eat out AFC headquarters. The only person who used to visit the building was former Indigenous Affairs Minister Garido Lowe. This was shortly after the election of the new government. Since November last year, she has not been seen going there. No one goes there.
The truth is that the AFC is dead. Do you know there is a big Johnny Mathis hit that is extremely relevant when describing the death of the AFC? The key is the AFC symbol and listen to Mathis’s use of the word, “key.” The title of the song is, “Too much, too little, too late.” I’ve included the words to show you the incredible relevance.
“Guess it’s over, call it a day
Sorry it had to end this way
No reason to pretend
We knew it had to end someday, like this
Yes, it’s over, the kids are gone
What is the use of trying to hang on
Somewhere we lost the key
So little left for you and me
And it’s plain to see
Too much, too little
Too late to lie down again with you
Too much, too little
Too late to try again with you
We are in the middle of finishing
Something we knew
It was over
Oh, it was over
Too much, too little,
Too late to try again
Too much, too little
Too late, let’s end friends
Too much, too little
Too late, we knew it had to end
And, it’s over
It’s over
Yes, it’s over, the chips are down
Almost all of our bridges fell down
Whatever chance we try
Let’s face it a wider eye
It’s over ”
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of this newspaper.)