Dear Editor,
Opposition and PNCR Leader Robert Corbin’s latest exploit is the recall of James McAllister, a PNC MP, from the Parliament. This arbitrary act is not liable to judicial review. McAllister and a team of top party executives supported then Vice Chairman Vincent Alexander’s abortive run for the leadership against Corbin in 2007. Viewed as Team Alexander’s chief architect, Corbin has ferociously pursued McAllister. His colleagues, including Alexander, have now resigned in protest, triggering another rift in the PNC.
McAllister’s recall crosses the line. It was vindictive and undemocratic, and should not be accepted by PNC members. They must eschew visceral blind loyalty to a failed leader, and demonstrate political grit, sophistication and nimbleness of thought. Dictators who become liabilities and whose actions are inimical to their interest should not benefit from their confidence.
Diminished by blistering criticism of his dictatorial propensities and calls for his resignation, Corbin appeared on Sharma TV last Tuesday as defiant and delusional as ever. He argued that he was elected by his “membership,” and that only that “membership” could determine his fate at the next elections in 2009.
But the PNC’s “membership” alone doesn’t finance the party and produce the votes to win elections. Our body politic, as currently formalized, identifies the destiny of the political minority with the PNC. Broad support from the national polity is therefore indispensable to its viability.
The party is inexorably at a crossroads. Should it countenance its leader’s despot-like grip on power or act in its own strategic, permanent interest? The choice is clear. Blind loyalty to Mr Corbin propels it to a precipice of doom.
Since he assumed the leadership in 2002, the party has declined significantly; it lost six seats in the Parliament, and many others in local government councils in the 2006 general elections – its biggest electoral defeat in history. The party also suffered three major rifts under Mr Corbin and over fifteen top executive members have left the party.
In 2005, Raphael Trotman and a team broke away and coalesced with others to form the Alliance for Change (AFC). In 2006, the Reform faction of the PNCR coalition also broke away over differences with Corbin. Now Team Alexander has left the party.
Furthermore, Corbin has failed to adequately represent his constituency, improve the party’s political and financial fortunes and mount a robust opposition to the PPP. No leader of a modern political party with such a sordid record could survive discharge.
I did not support Alexander’s candidacy for leader but respect his right to seek any office in accordance with the party’s constitution.
This is what democracy is all about: freedom of thought and choice. Corbin is an antiquity from the PNC’s past. But with today’s paradigm shifts, his vendetta against Team Alexander is not only repugnant to the party’s own constitution, it contravenes the fundamental tenets of democracy.
Instead of engaging in clandestine manoeuvres with President Bharrat Jagdeo to amend the constitution to facilitate the recall of MPs, Corbin should have collaborated with Jagdeo to correct the thoughtless constitutional amendment which he supported, that made members of the Guyana Elections Commission permanent instead of the institution itself. This is proof certain of his whimsical leadership.
He is hung up on Team Alexander’s inclusion of executive committee minutes in pleadings to the Supreme Court in a 2007 lawsuit, although a better approach would have been an in-camera proffer to the court. What is so impermissible about Team Alexander’s court filings that it warrants expulsion and recall from Parliament? Is the PNC the ‘Red Army’? The correct course, in the interest of unity, should have been reprimand and, if necessary, a modus vivendi regarding their reintegration into the party’s hierarchy.
Corbin’s failed leadership places the political minority in peril. He has been disabled from accomplishing a basic opposition function of mobilizing national, regional and international opinion against a government that countenances torture; and which through passive disengagement, appears to embrace extrajudicial killings.
This notwithstanding, Corbin’s salient achievement for 2007 was collaboration with this said regime to enact recall legislation. His supreme accomplishment of 2008 was his vindictive use of that recall legislation to remove McAllister from Parliament. At this juncture, when the party is teetering on the brink of becoming a political irrelevancy, Corbin’s priority should be unity, rebuilding and regrouping. Not axing perceived opponents.
A modern society cannot tolerate undemocratic, vindictive political leaders with a predilection for power. Absent cause, including public corruption, misfeasance, malfeasance or any other breach of oath, Corbin cannot justify his arbitrary removal of McAllister from Parliament for lacking personal loyalty to him.
Consequently, the time has come for the party elders to ask Corbin to leave. He must resign to permit the formation of a vibrant democratic milieu with new leadership and a new vision.
Those who wish to see the preservation of the PNC must do the right thing and advocate new leadership that can inspire that preservation. The party is at its nadir. Corbin has been a monumental failure. He is compromised and has lost the confidence of the masses. It is the masses that will have to vote for the PNC to take it from where it is to where it wants to be – in government.
Which is more important to the PNC, a belligerent, dispensable Corbin or the indispensable vote of the people?
Yours faithfully,
Rickford Burke
