The Opporteuthanist that Killed ANUG
Last week, the Chairman of a political party once known as A New and United Guyana (ANUG), Dr. Mark France dragged the still fresh corpse of ANUG into a meeting with the Carter Center. In the picture, there are three Carter Center representatives, France and the General Secretary of ANUG, Jonathan Subrian.
How we know this meeting occurred is that when challenged on Facebook to show whether the Carter Center had met with representatives of the newly minted coalition of ANUG and Azruddin Mohamed’s ChatGPT-christened We Invest Nationhood (Prompt: Provide options for the name of a political party wit the abbreviation WIN), he couldn’t let it slide so he posted the picture. The problem is, when asked whether it was ANUG or ANUG-WIN directly, France slimed away as he has been prone to do.
Mark France, if you do not know him, has all the affect and demeanour of the pathological bullshit artist, even down to how he has stylized his name online. The enthusiastic social media politician renders his name on Facebook as Mark De France, adding what he perhaps views as the French noble prefix “De” to the fairly quotidian Mark Andrew Dylan France. A Cuban-trained doctor, with a thin, whiny, castrato voice on video, France flavours his soliloquys with the occasional “La historia me absolverá”, a quote made popular by an actual revolutionary political leader, Fidel Castro. My favourite name for him is Se Guevara – a man who when he looks into the mirror thinks he sees the reflection of the legendary revolutionary, Che Guevara, but is ready to segue into some idiocy or deflection whenever a hard question hits him on basic issues of policy or integrity. If you’re a fan of Game of Thrones, think of Theon Greyjoy – except without a redemptive arc and less balls.
No more was that clearer when last year, around the time he attained the ANUG Chair, a hitherto unknown incident from his past was raised, his suspension for two years for what he vaguely referred to as ‘professional misconduct’. Challenged on it, eight months later, France refuses to acknowledge misconduct for what it was, his forgery of not one but two supervising doctors’ signatures and their assessments (“VERY GOOD” in all caps in one case) to falsely certify that he had successfully completed the medical rotations.
The decision to enter a coalition with WIN has been an embarrassment of contortions for both ‘leaders’. After the secret signing of a still secret agreement, both men sent out a joint release at 3 am and then ran away to the interior on an outreach. They have insisted on calling their marriage a “collaboration”, a meaningless label electorally, primarily to protect Mohamed from seeming to have walked back his statement just weeks prior that he would not be entering a coalition with anyone. Then there was the curious taxonomic conundrum of the jagpard, one that France, the more evasive of the two, stayed completely out of. Then there was the fact that, hours after the announcement, the two key founding members of ANUG, the venerable Ralph Ramkarran and the highly respected Timothy Jonas, publicly signalled their resignations from the party.
According to reports, both men had cautioned against any political deal with Azruddin considering the OFAC sanctions against him as well as his current tax evasion charges in local court. France has claimed that Subrian – who signs his name as Jonathan Subrian, Esquire – was an internationally accredited lawyer, both in Guyana and the United States, and it is on Subrian’s legal advice that the decision to enter a coalition with WIN was made by the executive. There’s just one problem with that… well, two.
The first is that Insight searched and found no evidence that Subrian is actually a lawyer. That includes searching several New York State portals that showed no lawyer with the last name Subrian, whether with first name Jonathan or Krishna as he is otherwise known. A 2016 article in Stabroek News lists Subrian simply as a US-based Guyanese giving support to a suicide prevention programme. In brief, France seems to have forged Subrian’s legal credentials in order to justify the political liaison that actual lawyers, Senior Counsel Ramkarran and Jonas, advised against.
As for that executive and membership that was consulted on the coalition, France is again typically evasive. Outside of Dexter George and Joel Ramesh who were at the secret signing, no other executive appears actively involved. Indeed, when social media provocateur, Robin Singh posted the identities of current and previous ANUG executives, two members of the executive elected last year disavowed that they were still members.
As Arron Austin, listed as a Committee Member put it, “I Haven’t been a member of the executive of ANUG for quite some time, never acted in any official capacity and more recently have left as a member of ANUG collectively.”
It is against this backdrop of pathological duplicity and opacity that the Carter Center visit has to be considered. As of the writing of this piece, ANUG has not yet officially rescinded its application to participate. The convenience is clear. With a decimated executive and no actual membership to speak of, the desiccated shell of the party had one final use – the theatre of a meeting with a reputable international electoral observer that would not meet with WIN, even within the context of the coalition. That is why only France and Subrian, and not Mohamed or any of his surrogates, including the US-based [former] AFC associate Charles Sugrim or Mohamed’s sister Hana Mohamed, both of whom represented WIN at the first and so far only meeting GECOM has had with the registered parties. And that is why he would and could not explicitly say that the meeting was even tangentially on behalf of the Mohamed campaign – it was not.
Up until recently, France made a show of his wearing an ANUG orange shirt to WIN events. On Saturday he was clearly ordered to trade it in, and to stand behind Mohamed on a platform in Region 10. Like so many political conmen, France is equal parts pseudo-courageous, equal parts cloying ass-kiss. More than any other Mohamed acquisition, even before the merger, he spent months praising the businessman’s policy acumen, even while declaring boldly that he was a leader in his own right and answerable to no one.
Two weeks ago, a sequence of events occurred that would, of course, demonstrate that his supinity was superior to his bluster. On the morning that the National Grade Six Assessment results were to be released, Mohamed had one of his teleprompted critiques of government policy. His brows furrowed seriously, his eyes focus intently on whatever screen was in front of him, he went into a spiel attacking what he called a “crisis” in primary education and the downward spiral in NGSA results. There was one problem – not only were the results announced later that day a record high, with the lead student earning a perfect score and significant gains in all subject areas, but those scores were part of an upward trend. One of the persons who commended that achievement and cloying praised the Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand, was Mark France. Questioned on whether the as yet to be seen education policy that he has claimed, sort of, to exist in Mohamed’s ‘visionary’ yet invisible manifesto will reflect his evidence-based praise or his Presidential Candidate’s misinformed damnation, he tucks his tail and runs. Same as when asked whether he has seen and can verify the fantastic bit of campaign research that Mohamed has claimed to have undertaken involving 80,000 respondents, 65 percent of whom have indicated support for the businessman as President. Same running he does when asked how he intends to reconcile his former focus on transparent campaign financing with the fact that there has been no clear source of funds, and no clear financial accounting mechanism for Mohamed’s clearly well-funded campaign that has not had a single fundraising event or mechanism established, unlike the other significant parties involved in the race.
As of today, Nomination Day, the charade is over. ANUG is dead – the WIN t-shirt that France was forced to put on, Guyana’s Temu Theon, after he was sent to parlay with the Carter Center like a good boy, is his funeral clothes. While technically a coalition, and the partner with a more formal structure, we can project that less than a quarter of the names on ANUG’s diminished executive will be on the WIN list of candidates. Most definitely, however, there will be the shady, supine, opportunist doctor who euthanised a party in a desperate bid to gain a political position that he had neither the leadership capacity, competence or integrity to earn himself – an opporteuthanist if you will. Funeral service is between 10 am and 2 pm today – look out for the procession in blue.
