…by the PNC
Jerome Khan was one of a slew of new faces Desmond Hoyte brought into the PNC when he decided in 2001 to launch a “Reform” component to dull the raw edges of the party – typified by Hamilton Green, who’d been forced out in 1992. These worthies – like Stanley Ming, Eric Phillips, and Jerome Khan – gradually faded from the front lines, but maintained their linkages from their perches.
Khan, who informs us he had campaigned for the PNC-as-APNU as late as 2015, recently offered an analysis about what’s going down in the present power-grab by the occupants of Congress Place. Among other things, he claims that a “Burnhamite faction” – suppressed by Hoyte and later Corbin – has now seized the party and is calling the shots in the assault on democracy inside the ballot boxes. Problem is, in the estimation of your Eyewitness, Khan is making a distinction in search of a difference when he excludes Granger from this “faction” – which in itself is a problematic label.
“Twice before,” Khan insists, “this small but influential gang within the PNCR was thwarted in its efforts to seize control of the party… “This faction, I predict, will fight to the bitter end as their good life is threatened. They simply do not care about the threat of sanctions; they believe they can ride it out.”
Now, it’s quite true that when Hoyte succeeded Burnham, he went after the Burnhamites, and either banished or emasculated them so that he could control the PNC. David Granger was one of the Burnhamites banished. Even though he wasn’t in the PNC proper, he’d always been one of Burnham’s henchmen – and confessed after he was elected president that he was always a member of the PNC, and was committed to “fulfilling Burnham’s legacy”.
Now, while Hoyte mightn’t have been a Burnhamite, in the sense that he didn’t hold to all that socialist cant, he was always committed to the raison d’etre of the PNC – to keep out the PPP by any means necessary.
What he’s never been forgiven for by the Burnhamites, however, is that he blinked in 1992 and accepted his loss to the PPP at the ballot boxes. Never mind it took a call from the White House for him to make that “concession”.
Since that time, the cry from the PNC has been “NEVER AGAIN!!” That is, they will never again ALLOW the PPP to win another election. And it is from this perspective that there are no “factions” in the PNC on the question of POWER.
And it is Granger who’s leading this “war of attrition”, as Khan puts it, against the PPP! And he doesn’t intend to blink to the US.
…on the ballot boxes
The war of attrition started when RO Mingo “mingoed” the tabulation of the Reg 4 SOPs. But subsequent to several court orders from the full hierarchy of the Guyana judicial system – High Ct; Full Ct; Appellate Ct and then back again – the war has moved into the ballot boxes. The PNC-as-APNU has now demanded not only the counting of EVERY one of the 450,000 or so ballots cast on March 2nd, but even to examine all the other documents in the boxes – including cross matching them. Which, according to the finagler-in-chief Lowenfield, would drag the war of attrition on for another 156 days!!
Well, while the PPP had magnanimously gone along with the complete recount and not just Reg 4, which is where the “mingoing” occurred, they drew the line at Lowenfield’s ridiculous proposal. The Opposition Leader just announced that their Commissioners will demand that the exercise not take more than 10 days, and gave suggestions on how it can be done.
Not that this will stop the war of attrition.
…and plagues
The Jews are now observing “Passover” by remembering the 10 Plagues that had been visited on Egypt so that they might be set free.
In Guyana, we have to confront just 2: COVID-19 and the PNC!!
