…and the PNC
The CCJ decision has ripped away the mask of urbanity the PNC tried to adopt when they selected David Granger as their leader back in 2011. SELECTED!! Up to then, they’d been tagged as the party of violence, after their rampages in the 1960s had catapulted them into power in tandem with the electoral machinations of the Brits and Yanks, who just didn’t trust the PPP under Jagan. The violence erupted sporadically over the years — to secure ballots (by the army); to keep the Opposition cowed (House of Israel and thugs under Hamilton Green); and to spread terror in the hearts of the PPP supporters (kick- down-the-door bandits) — ‘till free and fair elections of 1992.
For the next 16 years, they reprised the widespread violent attacks against the PPP and their supporters – violent protests in the streets; arson and mayhem in the city; and, finally, terroristic armed attacks against the state and “PPP villagers” by gangs based in Buxton — until those gangs were literally wiped out by 2008.
At that juncture, PNC leader Corbin, who’d been closely identified with the violence and rigging, decided to paint some lipstick on the PNC. He picked the avuncular former head of the army, David Granger, and according to Aubrey Norton, a former General Secretary of the PNC, rigged the leadership elections to be at the head of the PNC. Granger was to reveal that he’d been a member of the PNC ever since he returned as a 2nd Lieutenant in 1965 in Burnham’s newly formed GDF. What has been forgotten by most is that Granger had Burnham’s confidence early on, since he was given the task of carrying out the army’s “ideological orientation”: which was basically that Burnham’s every whim was to be obeyed!!
When Rodney was infiltrating the GDF by 1979, Granger was promoted ahead of a large number of more senior officers to head the GDF. It was under his watch at the GDF that army personnel Gregory Smith assassinated Walter Rodney.
So those who felt that Corbin was making a “root and branch” change in the GDF with Granger were sorely mistaken. Similarly, those who talk of “hardliners” in the PNC who’re pressuring Granger towards a more confrontational path just don’t understand the creature of Burnham’s they’re dealing with. Granger is an anti-democrat who’s used to command and control, not discussion. This is the reason for his crude questioning of the CCJ’s decision on his unilateral appointment of Patterson.
And Nagamootoo and Johnson’s bellicose call to wage war against early elections?
After more than four years under Granger, they know the measure of the man: Talk softly and carry a stick!!
…and “royalty”
Joseph Harmon, Director of the Ministry of the Presidency, just described PM Nagamootoo as “royalty”!! This hyperbolic effusion, of course, was in the wake of the embarrassing but overwhelming AFC rejection of Nagamootoo as their PM nominee, if they were to be in coalition with APNU at the next elections. So we should take the bouquet with a handful of salt!!
For those of us who know Nagamootoo, it’s clear that after he left the AFC vote precipitately, when he saw how the wind was blowing, he ran sobbing directly to the Ministry of the Presidency, within which his office is subsumed. What else was Harmon to say?? That Nagamootoo was rejected as damaged goods by a dead meat party that was incapable of even garnering a single NDC seat in Nagamootoo’s home village of Whim?
And, then again, it might just be a signal that the PNC are not going to have any truck with Ramjattan, who’s prone to embarrassing gaffes.
Unlike Nagamootoo, who sticks to the cloying, sycophantic lines handed to him!!
…rising
There was a time, not so long ago, when the PNC goons were recruited from the denizens of the less prosperous sections of G/t.
Today, with middle class fellas like Jordan willing to carry that lance, those poor lumpen elements will be jobless!!
