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Alliance for Change Chairman Raphael Trotman is passionate about Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation and a bill that seeks to bring this about, a labour of love for the AFC, is to be tabled as a private member's bill.
"Our main duty is to bring this bill to the place of the peoples' representatives and we would like to see how the peoples' representatives react to a bill that is going to open up press freedoms and so on," Trotman said in an interview with Stabroek News on Monday.
AFC Leader Khemraj Ramjattan has presented the bill to the Clerk of the National Assembly. Ramjattan, who was expelled from the PPP/C and another AFC principal Sheila Holder, who formerly represented GAP/WPA, have refused to give up their seats in Parliament. And while Trotman acknowledged that it was an issue, which was not going to go away completely, he said the AFC was continuing to review it. "We continue to act in what we think is best for the movement and what the people want," he said.
While Ramjattan's absence is noticeable in Parliament at many sittings, Trotman said he was pressing forward "with the work that we have committed to; he is seeing it [the FOI bill] through. That bill is before the Clerk's office to be sent to the Chief Parliamentary Counsel Office for review."
Trotman, who had resigned from the PNCR, had also held on to his seat in the House for a while before withdrawing as he had promised he would do. He said the withdrawal of the others would be in keeping with their internal arrangements to pilot the bill through Parliament and in time they would follow suit.
Told that there were other MPs in Parliament and within the opposition who could have piloted the FOI bill, such as ROAR MP Ravi Dev, who some feel the government and the main opposition would have been more inclined to support, Trotman said that argument was "disingenuous".
He said no other MP had ever proposed, offered to draft, or had been involved in drafting such a bill. "This is our labour. We have also received assistance from the Human Rights Initiative. They are in contact with us two or three times a week. So we have a commitment. It is a private member's bill. It is something we feel strongly about. While we feel others would take it through we recognise that the others have never in the past identified it as an issue that they wanted," he said.
Asked whether he thought an "AFC" bill would get the required support for enactment, Trotman said, "I'll tell you what is important. What is important is that a FOI bill sees the light of day in Guyana. If the government is as backward enough to shoot it down...well then it just adds another nail in its coffin." If the main opposition went the same route, he said, in 2006 when the cries of corruption, nepotism and cronyism are so alive and rampant, then, its members too, would have to give an account of themselves. Asked whether the AFC drafters consulted other MPs, Trotman said some of them behaved as though the FOI bill was not needed.
Trotman added: "We have shown it to some stakeholders in civil society. It is posted on our website. When we get a signal from the Speaker that it is ready, we intend to hold public symposia on the issue. We are going through the various stages."
Elections
Asked whether the AFC would support the call for a boycott of the general elections due by August 4 this year, he noted that the party had already said it was not in favour of a boycott based on ethnic grounds which appealed to one ethnic group in society only. "That would only reinforce the division rather than help the situation," he said.
He said the African Cultural Development Association (ACDA), which put forward the notion in the first instance, should have called for a national boycott, which would have given it credibility, rather than appeal to a section of society.
While he could appreciate where ACDA was coming from and the frustration it was expressing given the fact that after three successive elections the lot of Guyanese of African descent has not improved, he said there was a growing sense that the utility of political parties and elections was lost and what was played out at elections was an ethnic census. "We share ACDA's concerns and sympathise but believe that true power could be shown at the elections rather than staying away from it," he added.
Asked about alliances and why the AFC was not part of the Guyana Third Force Platform, Trotman said the platform was launched before the AFC was, so it could not have been part of the initial process. However, he said, after the AFC was launched a series of meetings were held between the AFC and the GTF; the last one was in December when the GTF members asked for a postponement of the talks because of an internal issue they wanted to resolve. He believed the internal issue had to do with GAP Leader Paul Hardy leaving the platform.
He said when he last spoke with Vision Guyana Leader and member of the GTF platform Peter Ramsaroop at a Miami airport, Ramsaroop confirmed there would be no further meetings between the GTF and the AFC since the notion of what the GTF stood for was lost.
Alliances
Trotman said it was not a case where the AFC refused to be a part of the GTF and while some had objections to the AFC coming on board until Ramjattan and Holder had left Parliament, it was not seen as a stumbling block to discussions.
But since the GTF platform has more or less collapsed, Trotman said, the AFC has been making itself available for political unions or collaborative efforts. The AFC has had talks with the Justice For All Party (JFAP), GAP, ROAR and the Unity Party. "All are led by persons and have persons within who are making or could make a contribution to Guyana," he said.
Asked whether the AFC was courting these political parties to join the movement, he said the ideal was to have everybody under one banner but barring that the next best thing would be to have a working relationship for a common purpose with a preagreed agenda should they get into Parliament.
But isn't that going back to the GTF platform set up? Trotman replied that even though the third force concept came from Ramjattan and himself about two years "predating Peter Ramsaroop's platform" they never claimed ownership of it. "We don't say we have copyright for it. At the end of the day, the most important thing is a working relationship of third, middle, or, centrist parties, which do not cleave to the two major parties."
He said all the political parties that stand in the middle and are prepared to offer themselves as an alternative to the PPP/C and the PNCR would be friends of the AFC in the preelections period. In the postelections scenario, he said, the AFC would have to work with them all.
"We are not out to destroy the PPP or the PNCR," he said. "We are out to change the political system so much so that if at the end of this exercise the PNCR and the PPP/C collate, or start to speak to each other, we would have been successful. We intend to create space between them. It is for the people to decide how wide that space would be in terms of how many seats they are going to give us. Both parties have people who are quite worthy."
On current engagements, he said the AFC was enthused with the way discussions were going and were moving to formal talks. However, he said the fight was not for one group only and they could either go as a union or as groups within a given set of rules.
In terms of preparations for the elections, he said that apart from administrative matters, the AFC was benefiting from the advice of some external campaign strategists.
To date, he said, outreach programmes have had positive results and have penetrated traditional PPP/C or PNC strongholds. These include some support in the Corentyne, West Coast Berbice and sections of the community in Essequibo, Pomeroon, Port Kaituma, Mabaruma and the North Rupununi. He said the support was encouraging but there was need to consolidate it.
On the remarks by PPP General Secretary Donald Ramotar that the upcoming elections would be a contest between the PPP/C and the PNCR with no space for the smaller parties as they have created no impact, Trotman said he disagreed based on surveys and meeting with the people. He said people would either reject the third force change concept or accept it all together.
Stating that Ramotar would be proven wrong, he said he was aware that the PPP/C continued to pay keen interest to the AFC's activities and was worried. Even the Bisram opinion poll showed that the PPP/C was not likely to get the 51% of votes required to form the government, he said.
To charges that the AFC was bringing nothing new to the political stage, Trotman said the AFC was going to push the issue of healing and reconciliation, atonement and forgiveness and call on the people to do likewise and put aside grievances and race hate. Already, he said, leaders in Buxton have asked the AFC to help heal relationships with Annandale and the process has begun.
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