…PNC gaslighting
You gotta hand it to the PNC. Hand what? The prize for conducting the most bold-faced rigging of an election. And not giving up. What makes it even more incredulous is that the Opposition PPP knew from the word go the PNC was planning a rig – even when the word “go” was delayed for a year by the PNC in the courts! It wasn’t as if the PPP deployed any deep analytical powers: rigging elections was the default mode of the PNC for more than half a century. They really can’t help themselves: in reflecting on their proclivity, locals would shake their heads ruefully and mutter, “When daag l’arn fuh suck egg…”
The PNC could’ve gotten away with their serial heists of the ballots between 1968 and 1985 ‘cause the aforementioned PPP had a leader who (internationally) put “The West on Trial” and (domestically) couldn’t do a thing about it. The PNC always knew they could count on (in Hoyte’s words) their “kith and kin” in the army, police, civil service and even so-called “independent and neutral” institutions like the Elections Commission. They were only eased out of office – but not of power – only when the US decided that the fella who’d put them “on trial” had run out of threatening friends.
During the twenty-three years the PNC were out of office, they tried every which way to leverage their power bases to get back into office. They were stymied by the leader who took over from the “West on Trial” guy – the PPP’s Bharrat Jagdeo. And the PNC have never forgiven him for this. It had to be galling to come up against a fella who used the “by any means necessary” techniques the PNC thought they’d patented!!
Demographic changes and looong incumbency proved the PPP’s undoing and when they were ousted in 2015, they knew the PNC weren’t going to go quietly into the night at the next elections. But they figured that since Guyana had suddenly reacquired strategic importance to the West because of the oil find and they’d shed their “fellow traveller” label, the West weren’t going to turn a Nelson’s Eye this time around.
But the PNC’s geriatric leader Granger – and his band of merry men and women in green, who’re all Burnham’s acolytes – plainly believe otherwise. Like Joshua of yore, they insist their invocations at Seven Ponds stopped time and the West is still with them. Once they maintain their legal fig leaf by having the Courts split hairs.
Their latest ploy is to gaslight the nation with their new narrative that the PPP doesn’t want the recount.
But can they gaslight the Western Ambassadors who saw the SoPs Mingoed??
…PNC?
Ever since they were ousted in 1992, the PNC flailed around to erase the disreputable image they’d earned since the sixties with their Touton Macoute tactics. Like bumping off rivals such as Walter Rodney. Desmond Hoyte launched a PNCR(eform) by imitating the PPP’s “C(ivic) component. That didn’t work, so back to the drawing board they went – and came up the PNCR One-Guyana which produced the very apt acronym: PNCR1G!!
Well, when the name tinkering didn’t do the trick (and it was always going to be a trick), they decided to change the leader and the name. So, in came Granger— who’d been Burnham’s go-to guy in the Armed Forces – and he used some inconsequential paper parties to produce – voila! – APNU. This gave them office in alliance with the AFC.
But with the stresses and strains of the imminent sanctions that’ll be slapped on them, both the Coalition and APNU appear to be imploding.
So, what will it be?? An APNU (G) and an APNU (H)?? The more things change…
…petition for sanctions
It’s quite possible the Americans would have already sanctioned Granger’s rigging crew save for the COVID-19 pandemic. They don’t want to revive their “ugly American” image.
But now that over 6000 Guyanese citizens have called for personal sanctions, all bets are off!
