…examined by insiders
The Stabber carried an interesting piece about three generations of PNC diehards – Hamilton Green from the 60s, Basil Williams from the 80s and James Bond from the 2000s – doing a post-mortem on the PNC. Save since they all insist the PNC isn’t dead, you can imagine the effect their incisions must be having on the party that’s just sent 31 MPs to Parliament to do battle against the 33 PPP MPs!! Bloody!!
Starting with Green, who was with Burnham from early days – but was denied both the leadership of the PNC and of the country in the following SIXTY years – they seem to feel the party has a life of its own, and would continue forever like Old Man River. Sadly, they don’t seem to appreciate that even rivers dry up when the rains that feed them cease!!
Seems that the three generational leaders feel that the “PNC must return to its roots” and ground with the grassroots folks. Implicitly, then, they’re of the view that the PNC under David Granger – who was made leader in 2011 – has moved away from those “roots”. This is quite a shift for Green who came to the defence of Granger when “youngster” Bond came out to savagely attack Granger for losing the March 2 elections – especially after he wasn’t made an MP and his benefactor Volda Lawrence was also slighted.
Green, of course, had made common cause with Granger since the days when both of them had been savagely dumped by Desmond Hoyte. Williams was a protégé of Hoyte, who, however, never saw him as very bright and brought in others like Raphael Trotman to fill that lacuna. He was quite noncommittal so he might be hedging his bets.
But what are these “roots” the three “concerned” PNCites are referring to?? They’re clearly referring to the Afro-Guyanese base Burnham created in the later fifties after he split the national independence party – the PPP. But isn’t this the base Granger had returned to when he threw Khemraj Ramjattan and the AFC under the bus after 2015 – even though they’d brought in the “outside” votes to push the 40 per cent base over the wire??
Wasn’t this the base that Granger had nourished at the grassroots by revitalising Afro-Guyanese villages with a $2.6 billion Agri Project? Or launched IDPAD-G with $64 million to assist Afro-Guyanese Organisations?? Or brought back the People’s Militia? Or launched SLED to build barbershops for the brothers? Or brought “Farmer Nappy” and Buju Banton?
Or most germanely shuttered four sugar estates and fired 7000 sugar workers, who generally supported the PPP? Exactly what new leaders would do with this base?
A return to the days of the “Freedom Fighters” of Buxton??
…loses its fig leaves
It’s only been a month since the APNU/AFC finally quit the government – after tremendous external and internal pressures –- but already two of the five “parties” they claimed made them into a coalition have jumped ship. These are the JFAP of CN Sharma’s “Voice of the People” fame and the WPA – a bunch of geriatrics still feeding off the memory of Dr Walter Rodney like maggots. The NFA of Keith Scott was never ever a “party” so it was eliminated simply by refusing it an MP posting. Had anyone even HEARD about the NDF? GAP remains as a name.
Fact of the matter is that all five “coalition partners” were mere fig leaves to hide the fangs of the PNC that had made everyone outside of its base recoil in scorn and horror when they were in the vicinity. So the question is whether what we have now is the “real” PNC – after Granger’s jettisoned the most flagrant retrogrades.
Is the PNC the PNC without those retrogrades?
…and its soul
The PNC was born to simply satisfy the ambitions of one man – Burnham, who, like a pied piper, led them down a path of destitution and destruction.
The PPP has an opportunity to bring back the unity of 1953!
