The Freddie Kisson Column - ‘Raphael, this is Nassau’

 

THIS column, which started a month ago, is another installment in my series on the political journey of the Mulatto/Creole class (MCC). I would like to think I have about two more pieces in the series before I conclude.
Today, I will look at the role the MCC played in the birth of the Alliance for Change (AFC). The analysis follows. One of the poorest moments in the history of Guyanese journalism continues to live on.

It marks one of the lowest points in the paucity of Guyanese journalism. In 2016, Raphael Trotman was campaigning in the 2016 Local Government Elections (LGE) in Bartica. He showered panegyrics on President Granger. The crowds roared with applause.
Trotman told the crowds that the APNU+AFC victory was due to the brilliant strategising of Granger. He explained to the audience that long before 2015, he and Granger had discussions about Guyana’s future while awaiting their flight at the Bahamas airport.
Trotman did not go into details but told the campaign meeting that after victory was secured in May 2015, Granger called him and said, “Raphael, this is Nassau.”

From 2016 when Trotman made that revelation to July 2023, no journalist has shown competence to ask Granger and/or Trotman what was the Nassau thing all about. I have tried since 2016 to put the pieces of this thing together.
I spoke to both top and second-tier leaders from the AFC and WPA. I have not asked Granger or anyone from the PNC. I never asked Trotman because he did not like the column I wrote on that particular LGE campaign meeting, so I felt he would not have opened up to me.

Here now is my logical deduction of what Trotman and Granger discussed. Granger is perhaps the most, devoted aficionado of Forbes Burnham, second only to Hamilton Green, and yes, more dedicated to Burnham’s legacy than Vincent Alexander. Granger published short history of the PNC, so he knew that Burnham had problems with the PNC’s relation with the MCC in the 1950s.

Granger felt in the 21st century, if the PNC was ever to retake power, it had to have a dedicated, straightforward, trustworthy relationship with the MCC, and the PNC had to compromise with the MCC by having MCC personalities in hierarchy of the PNC.
Granger and Trotman felt President Desmond Hoyte as opposition leader and his successor, Robert Corbin had alienated the MCC. Trotman revolted against Hoyte’s leadership and left the PNC.

Granger set about trying to resuscitate the friendship between the PNC and MCC. In fact, a type of camaraderie developed between Granger and one of the long-standing personalities in the MCC, David DeCaires, founder of the Stabroek News (SN).
When Granger’s monthly magazine, “Guyana Review,” ran into financial trouble, DeCaires bought it over for millions to be published monthly in SN, which in turn almost bankrupted SN which had to seek a $200 million loan from Republic Bank.
Today, the Guyana Review is published twice yearly in SN. In 2010, the stage was set for the inclusion of the MCC into the PNC. David Granger became leader of the PNC.

Prior to that, the MCC had birthed its own party, the Alliance For Change (AFC) with some of the leading MCC personalities in Guyana. Its leader was Raphael Trotman. The stage was now set for a working relation between the MCC in the PNC and the MCC in the AFC.

But there was a problem within the AFC. Raphael Trotman argued with his MCC colleagues that the AFC needed to be more broad-based and should seek the political influence of Khemraj Ramjattan. But the MCC rejected that.
It is not possible to quote some of the rejections of Trotman’s suggestion based on class ethnicity and colour, but some MCC elements argued that since Christopher Ram was part of the AFC’s foundation leadership (the AFC was formed in Ram’s office), the AFC did not need Ramjattan.

Trotman insisted on Ramjattan’s inclusion but agreed to the proposal that Ramjattan would not be the AFC’s presidential candidate in any future election. But Ramjattan had other ideas about where the AFC should go. Ramjattan recruited a number of ex-ROAR activists after that party founded by Ravi Dev had withered away.

Ramjattan was no fool. He knew that the MCC in Guyana lacked the financial firepower that the PPP had. So he brought in ROAR personalities that consisted of Indian expatriates with money.
From there on, the AFC became a boiling cauldron of Indians versus MCC people that almost destroyed the AFC when Ramjattan insisted that he should be presidential candidate in the 2011 election because Trotman had it in the 2006 elections. To be continued.