AFC Presidential Candidate, Khemraj Ramjattan(This is the second in a series of articles featuring Presidential Candidates of the main political parties ahead of this year’s general elections. This week, the Alliance for Change’s Khemraj Ramjattan makes startling revelations of inner workings of the ruling PPP, from which he was ousted, and how he plans to bring about change in Guyana if elected.) When the Alliance for Change (AFC) emerged as a political party with progressive thinkers Raphael Trotman and Khemraj Ramjattan, many hailed it as the Third Force to raise Guyana out of decades of political morass, characterised by hostile politics and a continuing racial divide that stifled real development.It achieved a feat that is unheard of in Caribbean politics. Within just seven months of its formation, the AFC faced the electorate, and a whopping 28,000 votes came in.“It was fantastic,” Ramjattan says, the excitement was as fresh as when the results were announced in August 2006.Ramjattan had become an outspoken advocate for change within the corridors of Freedom House, which housed the ideologues of Marxism, Leninism and Communism of the ruling People’s Progressive Party (PPP).Trotman, touted as one of the bright stars that could reverse the fading fortunes of the People’s National Congress and do away with its old style of politics, was disenchanted when his ideas fizzled into thin air.A propitious meeting in Helsinki, Finland organised by the World Bank, to which Ramjattan, Trotman, and Working People’s Alliance Parliamentarian Sheila Holder were invited, proved to be just the platform they needed to discuss the idea of a brand new movement that would be distinctly different from the PPP and PNC, which would seek support from ethnic bases and preach reconciliation and harmony.The trio returned to Guyana after the conference, and had discussions with others who were excited about the birth of a new political entity.What shocked Ramjattan the most was the sheer number of Guyanese businessmen who were ready to support the idea and dole out the cash to get the movement on the road.The idea now developed, Ramjattan and Trotman, together with Holder, were determined to do away with the racial politics that have dominated Guyana since 1955 when two factions of the PPP developed, with Afro Guyanese supporting Forbes Burnham and Indo Guyanese supporting Dr Cheddi Jagan.Ramjattan and Trotman decided that they could best erase the ethnic sensitivities by choosing to rotate who would be presidential candidate, and to even split terms as president, if the AFC were elected to the seat of government.The way it would work is that no one candidate would always run for the presidency, but that the party would put up a candidate from a different ethnicity (from the dominant Indo and Afro Guyanese population) at every election.As a result, Trotman ran for the Presidency in 2006 and now its Ramjattan’s turn.“When we made the arrangement we had indicated as a method to take care of ethnic challenge, the ethnic fears and the ethnic insecurities.”If they were to win the seat of government, one of them would be president for the first half of the term, and the other the second half. The same principle would apply if they were to lead the opposition and they had to decide on an opposition leader.“If Burnham and Jagan had worked out a rotational principle they could have led the country and not cause the divisiveness of the Burnham and Jagan factions.”But this time around, Trotman is not Ramjattan’s running mate. Trotman decided to forego his Prime Ministerial nomination to make way for a woman, Sheila Holder.Listening attentively at a community meeting“It was very magnanimous on his part,” Ramjattan says of Trotman’s move.Many see it as a sort of downward slide for the AFC, given that the seats which the AFC earned in the National Assembly were primarily because of Afro-Guyanese votes – mainly because of Trotman as the Presidential Candidate. Ramjattan finds that argument “fallacious.”“I am very confident that it was the concept of new party and the principles that we stood for that got the votes; it was not personality,” Ramjattan asserts.But he admits that the AFC did not get a sizeable amount of Indo Guyanese votes, mainly because, the PPP “scandalised” the AFC as just another PNC, and so a lot of the disenchanted PPP Indo Guyanese supporters chose not to vote for the AFC but to stay home.Ramjattan sees evidence of this in the fact that the PPP received 50,000 less votes in 2006 than it did in 2001.This time around, Ramjattan is confident that the AFC will attract more Indo Guyanese votes, and if the AFC does not win the seat of government, at least it will cut down the majority the PPP has.More than anyone else in the AFC, and perhaps no one in other political parties, has faced the constant attacks of the PPP than Ramjattan. He has even been called “cock-eye” on public platforms.“I was a good cock-eye for them wh