While the PNC might have assumed its name in 1958, it was actually formed in February 1955, at the PPP Conference held at the Metropole Cinema. Then PPP Chairman Forbes Burnham packed the pit with his Georgetown supporters, and arranged for one of his partisans on the Exec Committee to call for the suspension of the Standing Orders and pass a resolution on a vote for leadership. Jagan and most of the Executives immediately grasped that this move was a repeat performance of Burnham’s 1953 “leader or nothing” demand, and walked out. Burnham named his rump faction PPP (Burnham), then changed the name to the Peoples National Congress after his faction was trounced in the 1957 General Elections.
The PNC leadership, then, was born out of plotting and fraud against unsuspecting erstwhile comrades, and we see this history repeating itself as farce almost seventy years later, in this latest 22nd Congress. We shall skip over, at this point, the very serious allegations of sexual harassment and threat allegedly made by incumbent PNC Leader Aubrey Norton against a senior PNC member, since it is reportedly under investigation by a Committee of PNC “Elders”, and focus on the accusations of plotting and fraud.
Against a background of a computer CPU with the names of PNC members going “missing”, and the resignation of the General Secretary, who was berated for inquiring about the status of the said names, as well as for letters inviting party groups to the Congress being sent out by the leader without even her perusal, though it was her responsibility, the two CEC members contesting against Norton for the leadership “suspended” their candidacy.
First was Amanza Walton-Desir, who identified “recent developments, which I am not at liberty to ignore, (that) have raised serious concerns regarding the (party’s electoral) process.” Specifically, she declared: “As of the morning of June 27th, 2024, one day before the commencement of our Congress, a preliminary list of delegates has not been made available to me, as a candidate, to allow for claims or objections; and further, there is a lack of agreement among all candidates contesting on the procedures for conducting the elections.” Ironically, the PNC is the party that has been screaming that the National List of Electors was “bloated”, and must be “sanitized” before holding General and Regional Elections in 2025.
The second contestant, Roysdale Forde, who is a PNC Executive, in bowing out of the race, also expressed deep concerns about the integrity of the list of delegates. “There have been noticeable irregularities concerning the list of delegates, which raise serious concerns about the transparency of the election process.” He elaborated: “Unreasonable timelines have been imposed to meet certain requirements for holding the Congress, which have placed undue pressure and constraints on the democratic process.”
Against this background, the “re-election” of Aubrey Norton as the PNC Leader rings very hollow, and casts severe doubts on his credentials to practise democratic politics in the national sphere. Burnham, who was willing to sell out his comrades to become leader, subsequently rigged elections for decades to remain in power. He once told a Caribbean leader who had lost an election that he could not understand how he could allow this to happen. The premise, of course, is that once a leader controls the mechanism of elections, they not only can, but SHOULD, finagle with that mechanism to ensure they do not lose power.
We should note also that all those who are now crying “foul” against Norton’s alleged electoral manipulations stood mute – and benefitted – when the then PNC Leader David Granger used the same rationale to attempt to massively rig the 2020 elections. One lesson out of this sordid series of unfortunate events is to verify the folk wisdom which asserts that “whatever goes around comes around”. Those who acquiesced in the traducing of democratic norms when it benefitted them must understand that one day they might be at the receiving end of the same ploy. The people must heed this lesson in 2025.
