Dear Editor,
The PNC just announced its election/selection process for its presidential candidate in the 2011 election. The dark cloud hanging over this entire process is Robert Corbin’s continued existence as party leader after elections that some party members claimed were fraudulent and subverted.
That this man continues to hold the reigns of power in the PNC after the fiasco that surrounded his securing of that power is a travesty in itself.
Moving on, this elaborate nomination process is really a waste of time and a smokescreen because the entire nation already knows the four people who have thrown their hats into the ring. Who are the party groups going to nominate, someone who is not planning on running? Behind all the layers of this pretentious onion lies the real power broker in this entire process. All nominations must finally arrive at the PNC’s Central Executive Com-mittee (CEC). The PNC’s CEC is no different from the PPP and AFC and their all-powerful central committees where inner circle controllers make the ultimate decisions. The CEC makes the ultimate decision as to who gets to run for the nomination. The CEC can trim the list of nominees to ensure its own selections are the only ones to proceed to election.
Now, there are two areas where the PNC have gone somewhat differently from the PPP and AFC despite serious questions relating to both of these areas and the underlying process that led to these two areas. The first is by copying a standard practice in the developed world, they will have a town hall type meeting process where the nominees in the race can directly address the people. The second area is by getting a special conference to elect its presidential nominee. On paper, both of these processes hold promise but democracy is not perfected on paper. Hanging over this entire process is this ‘special congress.’ As is usual in Guyana, only specially selected people attend political party congresses. Who will attend this special congress could prove intriguing. The last major PNC electoral process was smeared in allegations of electoral fraud, subversion and rigging. That said, for the PNC to put the election of its presidential candidate to a congress is better than a small group of people sitting on a central committee making that decision. The PNC’s dismissal of the one-man one-vote system on the basis of transparency is bogus as this is the best process to elect presidential candidates in a nation that has significant problems with executing democratic practices. Practice is more critical to democracy than theory.
Yours faithfully,
M. Maxwell
