Dear Editor,

Stabroek News on April 29 carried an issue of the Guyana Review which had on its front page, a captioned article, ‘Robert Corbin: A political career at the crossroads.’

The writer of the article demonstrated that he is a keen observer of the issues impacting the national political landscape and developments in the PNCR. In his assessment of Mr Corbin’s leadership of the PNCR and of the challenges facing the party he/she tried to be very objective in his/her presentation. In my estimation the article is one of the better pieces I have read on the PNCR and its problems.

The writer, however, failed to address two important and critical elements which are so necessary to a developed understanding of the problems/challenges that afflict the PNCR. One of these issues has existed like a festering sore and has considerably engaged the attention of every leader of the PNCR – whether that person was Burnham, Hoyte or Corbin – and it awaits a solution from Corbin’s successor. Only time will tell if he or she has the capacity to deal with it.

I am referring here to the issue of racial voting at election time. The PNCR came into existence as a result of a split in the national movement which resulted from political and racial differences and the lust for power by some of the leaders within the PPP, the organization which mobilised the people so successfully for the 1953 elections. Since its formation the PNC has not been able to win an election in Guyana that was considered free and fair, even with its founder leader at the helm. I have asked this question before and pose it here again – how can Corbin or any other PNCR leader hope to achieve what the charismatic Burnham and Hoyte, even with their use of the resources of the state, could not achieve, ie win over from the PPP the necessary Indian votes for an election victory? The writer, with his/her excellent knowledge of the nuances surrounding our national politics must be aware of this historic dilemma, which haunts and will continue to haunt the PNCR for years to come. In a certain sense Corbin is a victim of a process over which he has little or no control. I want to make it very clear that I am not attempting to make an excuse for Corbin’s perceived weak, questionable leadership as it relates to the real strengths of his party and the African community. I am however contending that the writer, by failing to address the aforementioned, treated with Corbin‘s electoral loss as though he and his party are operating in a political environment like the UK, where issues and leaders’ personalities are what determine who win and who loose. That is not the case in Guyana.

The second flaw in the writer’s arguments is in respect to the challenges which Corbin faced and is still facing from his contemporaries in his party’s leadership. While recognizing the existence of the challenges, the writer failed to recognise that in reality, the challenges greatly reduced the effectiveness of Corbin’s leadership, in the same way it would have done to any other incumbent with the exception of Burnham and Hoyte. It can be argued that unlike Burnham and Hoyte, Corbin never had a free hand and was never accepted and treated with the same respect that was shown to the two maximum leaders of that party. Instead, it would be more true to say that some of his close cohorts felt they were intellectually superior to him. In that kind of scenario it is hard to believe that leadership responsibilities were firmly entrenched in his hands as in the old days with other leaders. The changed reality in the party and country meant that in Corbin’s tenure, the other contenders for the position of leader in the party enjoyed more power and political space than they would have had under either Burnham or Hoyte, They therefore had more opportunities to influence the direction of the party – and they did, but in the wrong direction. Rather than appreciate the historic limitations of the party and try to chart a militant struggle for shared governance/executive power sharing, they instead chose the path of electoral opportunism which inevitably, led to a major fight over a non issue – Corbin’s electability. Objectively, the struggle in the party should have been whether Corbin was providing militant leadership to force the PPP/C to the table to negotiate a shared governance solution. This is the challenge which any incoming PNCR leader must confront.   The factions in the party who are challenging for the leadership are silent on how they will confront the PPP/C if they succeed in wresting control of the party from Corbin. Their approach to dealing with the PPP/C must be directly opposed to Corbin’s approach. In other words it cannot be the same so-called statesman-like politics which Corbin has been accused of adopting. It has to be rooted in militant action or they will just be wasting their time. If they adopt any other course they run the risk of letting the party membership believe that even as Corbin was running on one cylinder or on half of a cylinder, as is now being claimed, he was always way ahead of them.

It is unfortunate that those disaffected with Corbin appear to be more occupied with sabotaging the party’s work in their efforts to make him look bad. One gets the impression that they are proceeding with their plans with little regard for the long-term effects their actions will have on the party and its ability to defend it constituents and the nation. What is more worrying is that they seem totally oblivious about the extent to which the party is perceived as disintegrating. I personally came face to face with this attitude of some senior leaders of the PNCR during our work in the People’s Movement for Justice (PMJ) which led the struggle for the restoration of the rule of law and against state sponsored killings. This is not an argument to absolve Corbin from his responsibility as the leader of the PNCR and the parliamentary opposition. He has done an excellent job of remoulding his image and that of his party, to a point where, in the eyes of the rulers and sections of the PPP/C supporters he and the PNCR are seen as a responsible opposition. However, among large sections of its members and supporters the party and Corbin are seen as being weak and ineffective. Corbin’s reluctance to use the legitimate force at his disposal, ie sustained use of the power of the people on the streets to propel the country to an unprecedented crisis over the need for shared governance has been his and his party’s undoing. However, the jury is still out on his leadership. He and his party can continue to be prisoners of election politics and in the process justify his detractors’ disrespect of him, or, he can now draw a line in the sand and take up the challenge which history has bestowed on him and the PNCR.

The time for rhetoric has long gone. The leader of the PNCR, old or new, has to be more proactive not reactive.

Yours faithfully,
Tacuma Ogunseye