Joel Edmond is resigning from AFC, Fifth senior member since August
– says party has “lost its way”
Recently retired AFC executive Joel Edmond
Kaieteur News – Yesterday the Alliance for Change (AFC) lost its fifth member to resignation since the government change last August, this one was Joel Edmond, the coalition’s two-year executive of the coalition.
Edmond came out publicly yesterday to announce his resignation, which he said was “of immediate effect.” Kaieteur News subsequently reached out to Edmond and asked him what prompted his withdrawal from the AFC. He told this announcement that, following the long March 2020 General and Regional Elections, the AFC had “lost its way further.” He said he expected the party to re-group, restart projects and “go back to basics after the loss.”
“But nothing has been done,” Edmond told this publication.
“This has been brewing for some time, even after the 2015 elections,” Edmond noted, “The AFC has somehow lost focus, and it deteriorated after the [2020] elections. ”
When asked why he waited so long to resign if he noticed the party’s demise some six years ago, Edmond noted that he was “hopeful the AFC would come back.”
“But basically everyone is scattered, and I thought losing the elections would have been an eye opener for them,” he noted.
Edmond, who is an attorney-at-law, said his resignation from the AFC does not signal the end of his political career. When Kaieteur News asked him if he has any intentions to join another political party, he declined to comment.
Last week, former AFC MP Reynard Ward tendered his resignation from the party over its “broken, abusive and one-sided relationship,” AFC Leader Khemraj Ramjattan referred to the party’s links with the A more . National Unity Partnership (APNU).
Ward had served in the Senate from April 2019 until the end of the administration’s final term, as a new MP, after court battles following the December 21, 2018 No Confidence Motion decided that it was illegal for some of the Coalition’s dual citizen MPs to sit the House. .
AFC leader Khemraj Ramjattan, at a press conference last week, expressed his disappointment with Ward’s decision to leave the party, and had said “You will have people coming away for various reasons,” and “I am rather suspect that it might be other reasons why he left, but good luck to him in the future. ”
The APNU + AFC Coalition relationship has been strained, following a controversial five-month election saga, characterized by widespread accusations of electoral fraud. The Coalition most notably attempted for the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to declare results, which would have given it a second term, but which were exposed as fraudulent.
Ward’s resignation from AFC is not the first since the APNU + AFC was dismantled by the People’s Progressive / Civic Party (PPP / C) in August last year. Former District Five Councilor Abel Seetaram left the party last October and stated in a letter to Ramjattan that he was dissatisfied with the AFC’s relationship with the APNU, especially its largest constituent, the PNC / R.
Similarly, Ward, in a resignation letter addressed to the party’s General Secretary, said his best time in the AFC was when he was “the public Pitbull and not the PNC puppet.”
“However, sadly,” he added, “after 2015, the implementation of the vision was tuned. The vision for the new Guyana coincided with the wishes and dreams of the hopes of the 1970s and 1980s. This began to diminish the hope and trust of party supporters and the trust of the people, even those who did not vote for us but supported what we were trying to achieve. ”
In his resignation letter, Ward told Patterson, “The AFC that consumed me, my young friends at the time, like-minded associates (intellectuals, professionals and others), family and even other party supporters was a force political to count with. The party was full of energy, hope and variety. That was what the new Guyana wanted; that was what most of the youths wanted; that is what the diaspora wanted. ”
The AFC, says Ward, has drawn the line with APNU despite the “aggressive” relationship, hoping for better, but “Unfortunately, even with current players, there seems to be no hope for a better tomorrow -process. ”
Notably, there are reports from other media departments that another AFC member, Vladimir Glasgow, an executive member of the party’s Linden Region 10 Branch, tendered his resignation late last year. According to those reports, Glasgow had said, like Edmond, that the AFC had lost its way and had been “consumed” by the National People’s Congress (PNC). Former executive Leonard Craig is also reported to have resigned from the party since last year.